Oil supermajors’ mega-bet on natural gas

Is the least grubby hydrocarbon a bridge fuel to a greener future, or a trap?

Energy companies have no seat at the climate high table convened by President Joe Biden on April 22nd and 23rd, to which he has invited 40 other world leaders to discuss how to speed up the shift from dirty energy. From the sidelines, coal firms will scowl at efforts to curb demand in Asia and oil drillers will wince at support for electric cars. Watching particularly closely will be those companies which have bet big on natural gas. As the energy transition gathers momentum, no fuel’s future is hazier than that of the least grubby hydrocarbon. read more

Oil And Coal Firms Guilty Of ‘Great Deception’ Through Greenwashing, Say Climate Lawyers

A team of U.K. lawyers today released what they say is new evidence showing that the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies are systematically “greenwashing” their image to make the public believe they are taking concrete steps to combat climate change. In reality, the lawyers say, the firms are committed to increasing the sale of fossil fuels, which will inevitably generate more greenhouse gas emissions. read more

Shell, Exxon Look to Profit From Capturing Customers’ Carbon Emissions

Big oil companies are exploring charging for carbon storage, hoping to benefit from the drive to reduce emissions

By Sarah McFarlane: April 19, 2021 5:30 am ET

Oil companies have for decades made money by extracting carbon from the ground. Now they are trying to make money putting it back.

Energy giants such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC are pushing carbon capture and storage—where carbon is gathered and buried underground—as part of a drive to reduce both their own and their customers’ emissions. Executives say the service could become a new source of income when the industry is grappling with how to adapt to a lower-carbon economy. read more

Shell Urges Shareholders to Reject Activist Climate Plan

(Bloomberg) — Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s board has urged shareholders to reject a climate resolution filed by Dutch activist investor Follow This in favor of its own energy transition plan, which the company will put to a vote next month.

The Anglo-Dutch major said that the Follow This resolution, which asks Shell to set and publish targets consistent with the goals of the Paris climate agreement, is “redundant” given its own “more comprehensive strategy,” according to a company notice. read more

Zik Gbemre: ON HOW TO REVAMP NIGERIA’S UPSTREAM AND DOWNSTREAM OIL & GAS SECTOR

3 APRIL 2021

With recent reports that the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Executive Council (FEC) had approved a whopping $1.5 billion to rehabilitate the epileptic Port Harcourt refinery, I consider it a national tragedy and a shame of a nation that Nigeria, despite its over fifty decades of oil and gas exploration and production activities, has been exporting its hugely produced crude oil and natural gas at commercial quantity and then import ‘refined petroleum products’ at higher costs to satisfy domestic demands. The said move, according to the government, is to ensure that the obsolete Port-Harcourt refinery, which last benefitted from a Turn-Around Maintenance (TAM) work in 2000, comes back to life, while also supposedly contributing to the development of Nigeria’s oil sector. read more

Oil companies defeat New York City appeal over global warming

By Jonathan Stempel, Sebastien Malo: 3 MIN READ: APRIL 1, 2021/ 2:53 PM

NEW YORK (Reuters) -A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected New York City’s effort to hold five major oil companies liable to help pay the costs of addressing harm caused by global warming.

Ruling in favor of BP Plc, Chevron Corp, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil Corp and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions should be addressed under federal law and international treaties. read more

Shell Plans To Double Down On Strengths As A Retailer In New Net-Zero World

Anglo-Dutch oil giant Royal Dutch Shell’s plan to reach net zero emissions by 2050, unveiled last month, focuses heavily on selling low-carbon electricity, biofuels and hydrogen directly to households and electric vehicle owners.

The strategy marks a contrast with that of other European oil majors, who in their own plans to reach net-zero emissions have vowed to accumulate vast amounts of renewable power generation capacity in the form of wind and solar assets. read more

Oil titans vow climate collaboration with White House

Chief executives of some of the largest U.S. oil companies promised to collaborate with the Biden administration in its campaign against climate change during a meeting Monday with White House National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy.

The oil industry leaders pledged support for federal regulations explicitly limiting emissions of methane from wells and other oilfield equipment — a declaration that dovetails with President Joe Biden’s vow to clamp down on leaks of the potent greenhouse gas. read more

How the Oil Lobby Learned to Love Carbon Taxes

The American Petroleum Institute may come out in favor of a carbon price, a sign of Washington’s dramatic move toward climate-friendly policy.

By Jennifer A Dlouhy and Leslie Kaufman: 4 March 2021, 07:00 GMT

Few saw the surprise disclosure earlier this week that the American Petroleum Institute is considering endorsing a price on carbon dioxide emissions and thought the fierce fossil fuel lobby was suddenly becoming climate-friendly. Rather, seasoned industry-watchers say it’s the clearest sign yet that fossil fuel companies see Washington’s shift on climate policy as a real and significant threat. read more

Which Banks Are The Biggest Backers Of Oil And Gas?

By Alex Kimani – Feb 25, 2021, 4:00 PM CST

About a month ago, BlackRock Inc.(NYSE:BLK), the world’s largest asset manager with $9 trillion in assets under management (AUM), sent shockwaves through the fossil fuel sector after it vowed to double down on climate activism by backing more shareholder resolutions on climate change and social issues in 2021.

Around the same time, the $226 billion New York State pension fund and the $5B Rockefeller Brothers Fund announced plans to divest the majority of their fossil fuel investments and also sell shares of other companies that have been actively contributing to global warming. read more

Shell’s Strategy Is Satisfactory

Summary

• This article takes a close look at Shell’s Strategy Day 2021, which focused on a net-zero emissions target and the businesses that Shell plans to operate.
• Ultimately, Shell isn’t changing its strategy too much, sticking to its core oil and gas businesses.
• By focusing on oil and gas and value over volume, Shell is a safer bet than BP which is betting big on a risky corporate restructuring.

The purpose of this article is to analyze Shell’s recent and very important Strategy Day. Shell had promised to give a lot of detail on an organizational restructuring at this event and it had the potential to radically change Shell’s direction. This means the Strategy Day presentations had a possibility to change my bullish thesis on the company. In that article I also gave some of my expectations of what I expected to see in Shell’s Strategy Day, and here I review the key takeaways of the Strategy Day and what they mean for my bullish thesis. read more

Editorial: Big oil confronts climate change – not a minute too soon

The Editorial Board: Feb. 13, 2021Updated: Feb. 13, 2021 2:13 p.m.

On Thursday, one of the world’s largest oil companies — Royal Dutch Shell — confirmed it will never again produce as much oil as it did in 2019. Peak oil production at Shell, said CEO Ben van Beurden, has come and gone.

The week before, ExxonMobil had made a similarly telling announcement: It is spending billions on a subsidiary formed to advance technologies to reduce the company’s carbon emissions and develop new products to help its customers do the same. read more

Oil majors suffer massive losses in 2020

At the worst of the crisis the two US oil majors considered another solution according to the Wall Street Journal — a merger that would have created a massive oil firm.

Shell CEO Ben van Beurden called 2020 an extraordinary year.

While much of the losses were accounting charges to record the drop in the value of their assets, the drop crude oil prices — which briefly turned negative in 2020 for the first time ever — caused real pain. read more

Massive losses should be a warning to big oil that its bonanza is over

Covid has battered the industry, and the race for renewables is speeding up. We are at a tipping point

Sun 7 Feb 2021 07.00 GMT

The final months of 2020 were a tough end to a tough year, according to BP’s chief executive. But Bernard Looney’s verdict on the worst financial year in the industry’s history is a devastating understatement. It was a period marked by thousands of job cuts, battered dividend policies and record multibillion-dollar losses. read more

Big Oil’s future could be smaller than its past

Paul Takahashi, Staff writer: Feb. 6, 2021

Oil companies have crisscrossed the world for more than a century, drilling on nearly every continent and in ever deeper oceans to prospect for fossil fuels that power the global economy.

While they did, the biggest six or seven companies collectively known as Big Oil reshaped international politics and economies, bending them to their will. Oil executives became statesmen in their own right, negotiating deals with foreign leaders to extract oil from the tar sands of Canada, the deserts of the Middle East, off the coasts of South America and Africa and in the shale formations of the U.S. read more

Debt-laden oil majors retreat amid rally

Royal Dutch Shell on Thursday added itself to the growing list of supermajors to post disappointing fourth-quarter results. Like many of its peers, the Anglo-Dutch company reported weak cash flow and net income that fell short of expectations.

The earnings came as an unpleasant surprise to investors that had been expecting a tailwind after crude recovered from last year’s historic lows. But with Covid-19 lockdowns still depressing fuel sales and refining margins, the industry’s focus is on playing defense rather than on taking advantage of a rally that’s pushing Brent crude toward $60 a barrel. read more