Climate-Action 100+, a group of money managers overseeing more than $33 trillion, works to influence the largest corporate emitters of greenhouse gases. So far the organization has persuaded Royal Dutch Shell Plc to set short-term climate targets and publish a report on its lobbying of governments.

Bloomberg: Big Money Starts to Dump Stocks That Pose Climate Risks

After years of meetings and shareholder resolutions, some funds are starting to simply divest from coal and oil stocks.

By Kelly Gilblom: 7 August 2019, 05:01 BST

Earlier this year, one of Meryam Omi’s deputies at Legal & General Investment Management sat down with board members and managers from Exxon Mobil Corp. to discuss how the oil giant could address climate change. LGIM, which manages about $1.3 trillion, is one of Exxon’s top 20 shareholders.

The Exxon delegation listened, but it didn’t accept the suggestions, says Omi, LGIM’s head of sustainability and responsible investment strategy. Around the same time, Exxon persuaded the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to block a shareholder resolution that pushed the oil giant to do more to address climate risks. read more

Europe’s largest oil companies shared a common theme in their latest second-quarter financial reports: Shell, Total and BP all partly blamed tepid gas markets for their lacklustre earnings. Hyped as the fuel of the future, liquefied natural gas (LNG) has become an increasingly tricky commodity for the industry to manage.

This could be because of three powerful economic forces now converging and complicating the outlook for the fuel.

Firstly, producers continue to invest billions of dollars into building new LNG projects, despite a growing glut of supply. read more

SPUTNIK: Shell Stops Sending UK-Flagged Ships Through Strait of Hormuz Over Tanker Seizure by Iran

02.08.2019

Since relations between Iran and the UK further deteriorated following the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ alleged attempt to block a BP tanker traversing the Strait of Hormuz, this British multinational oil and gas conglomerate has not sent tankers there. Its Anglo-Dutch rival has also followed suit.

The gas and oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has stated that they’ve ceased sending British-flagged vessels through the key lane for oil shipping, the Strait of Hormuz, amid the UK-Iranian tensions, exacerbated by recent incidents. They, however, will apparently continue using the route. read more

Shell’s profits slump to 30-month low on weak oil, gas prices

LONDON (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell’s second quarter profits slumped to a 30-month low due to lower oil and natural gas prices and refining margins, falling far short of forecasts.

The Anglo-Dutch company reported on Thursday a rise in cash generation – a sign of improving operations – but the drop in profit dents a steady recovery since the end of 2016.

Shell, the world’s second-largest publicly-traded energy company, joins rivals Total and Norway’s Equinor in reporting weak results for the quarter. read more

By Irina Slav – Jul 11, 2019, 3:00 PM CDT

Shell has furthered its stated commitment to cleaner electricity by investing in a U.S startup that has developed a blockchain-based platform for energy sharing.

The startup, LOW3 Energy, said in a press release earlier this week that Shell Ventures and Japanese Sumitomo had made “major investments” in its platform, which “represents a landmark moment for LO3 Energy as we begin to scale our blockchain-based energy networks around the world,” according to chief executive Lawrence Orsini. read more

Van Beurden told the New York Times in 2016 about how he had once come home to find one of his children crying inconsolably. He thought at first that it was because he was going out with his wife that evening, but he soon learned that she was upset because she had been learning about climate change at school.

By Joe Sandler Clarke: 19 June 2019

Ben van Beurden, the CEO of Shell, wants you to do your bit to solve climate change.

In early June, he told an audience of corporate bosses in London that we should eat fruit in season and recycle more.

“I have three daughters, they are all quite fashion conscious,” he explained. “I like to point out to them, having something new for every season four times a year is creating quite a significant ecological footprint, have you realised that? Because they are all about climate change.” read more

Jonathan Watts:  @jonathanwatts: Fri 5 Jul 2019 16.13 BST Last modified on Fri 5 Jul 2019 16.31 BST

The criticism of striking students by the trillion-dollar Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) highlights the growing reputational concerns of oil companies as public protests intensify along with extreme weather. Mohammed Barkindo, the secretary general of Opec, said there was a growing mass mobilisation of world opinion against oil, which was “beginning to … dictate policies and corporate decisions, including investment in the industry”. READ MORE read more

Fossil fuel industry giants such as ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell are maintaining an outsized presence at global climate discussions, working to undermine scientific consensus and slow policy progress, according to findings released Wednesday…

Delegates from major oil companies have influenced international accords for decades.

By Luke McGrath: 24 June 2019, 10:00 BST

Fossil fuel industry giants such as ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell are maintaining an outsized presence at global climate discussions, working to undermine scientific consensus and slow policy progress, according to findings released Wednesday by an environmental monitoring organization.

The Climate Investigations Center (CIC) report claims that fossil fuel trade associations have sent more than 6,400 delegates to climate talks since 1995, including delegates from Shell, BP and ExxonMobil. read more

Jillian Ambrose Energy correspondent: Thu 20 Jun 2019 07.00 BST

The UK’s largest energy companies have withheld support for a legally binding target to reduce the EU’s emissions to net zero by 2050, even while publicly backing the plans. Although BP and Shell have both voiced public support for the Paris commitments, neither backed the EU’s plans for a net zero carbon target by 2050 in their response to an official consultation. The companies’ decision to withhold support for the target has reignited criticism that major polluters are “greenwashing”… read more

Leslie Hook, environment and clean energy correspondent

Taken together, these lawsuits amount to a legal onslaught that climate activists hope will have a profound financial impact on oil and gas producers, by imposing huge penalties.

Most lawsuits name the biggest producers — such as Exxon, BP, ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron — as defendants, though the number of companies named ranges from five to 37.

FULL FT ARTICLE

Royal Dutch Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden speaks at a full year results conference in London on January 31, 2019. – Royal Dutch Shell today said that net profit surged 80 percent to $23.4 billion in 2018, thanks to higher oil prices and cost: AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Fifteen years later, peak oil is still talked about by some, but most industry insiders pay it no heed. Instead, over the last few years, the increasingly popular concept has been peak demand. Peak demand is the idea that the demand for oil will reach an apex and then start to decrease, especially as government regulations require more use of alternative energies and as battery-powered machines, like electric vehicles, will presumably become more popular.

Peak demand may or may come to pass—that is not the concern here. What we do know is that if the peak demand idea continues to gain popularity it will lead to a shortage of oil in the coming years and decades. The idea of peak demand threatens the global oil supply because it incentivizes and even excuses oil companies to stop exploring for and producing (E&P) more oil. read more

By David Fickling | Bloomberg: June 5 at 7:03 AM

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. read more

03 JUNE 2019

BP has agreed to pay around $10bn (£8bn) to a businessman involved in a suspicious energy deal.

The energy giant bought Frank Timis’ stake in a gas field off the coast of Senegal for $250 million in 2017.

But documents obtained by BBC Panorama and Africa Eye reveal that BP will also pay his company between $9bn and $12bn in royalties.

Both BP and Mr Timis deny any wrongdoing. read more

David Sheppard, Energy Editor: 23 MAY 2019

The annual general meetings of BP and Royal Dutch Shell this week confirmed Europe’s two largest oil and gas majors are on diverging tracks in the battle against climate change. Both companies now accept the need to overhaul their businesses in a manner that would have been unthinkable even five years ago, as the clamour from investors and activists has become too loud to ignore. But their approaches differ…

FULL FT ARTICLE

Climate change could wipe up to $4 trillion off the value of fossil fuel assets, the governor of the Bank of England has said: ALAMY

Several big fund managers believe that oil companies should shut themselves down because soon they will become impossible to invest in as the world switches to renewable energy.

A survey of 39 fund managers with $10.2 trillion under management found that 24 per cent wanted the oil industry “to wind down their businesses and return cash to shareholders”. All but two of the funds said that oil stocks would not be attractive investments within ten years if they failed to respond to climate risks. read more

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