Big Oil’s Pullback From Clean Energy Matters Less Than You Might Think
Oil and gas majors ramped up their investment in recent years, but it was still a tiny fraction of all the money flowing into the energy transition.
The Chevron Corp. El Segundo Refinery in El Segundo, California, in April 2020.
Photographer: Kyle Grillot/BloombergThe world’s five biggest publicly listed oil and gas companies posted just under $200 billion in total profits last year. Faced with three strategic possibilities for how to use their cash piles — extract oil and gas apace, move their businesses into renewable power and energy transition assets or return money to shareholders — the supermajors have largely sprung for the third option in recent weeks.
In other words, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., BP Plc, Shell Plc and TotalEnergies SE “choose cash over climate,” as Bloomberg reporter Kevin Crowley wrote recently. Shareholders seem to support this position: Resolutions that would have forced the companies to align with Paris Agreement climate targets failed. BP and Shell have also pulled back on their strategies to cut fossil fuel production. (One Shell power trader quit in response to the pivot.)