Sunset for Oil Is No Longer Just Talk
Shell, at least, is putting its money where its mouth is. The supermajor is running down reserves and paying out cash.
Seeing the light.
Photographer: Getty Images
Greenwashed rhetoric is such a staple of the oil industry that it’s easy to assume every energy executive talking about climate and the transition to a zero-carbon economy is just mouthing words.
Barely a year after BP Plc Chief Executive Officer John Browne promised “action and solutions” on climate change in a 1997 speech, he led the then-biggest oil takeover in history with the acquisition of Amoco Corp. On his retirement a decade later, after years of rebranding about moving “beyond petroleum,” he left a base of oil and gas reserves more than twice the size of the one he inherited.