Posts under ‘President Biden’

Big Oil Is In Desperate Need Of New Discoveries

By Alex Kimani – May 10, 2021, 2:00 PM CDT

The year 2020 was a watershed moment for the fossil fuel sector. Faced with a global pandemic, severe demand shocks and a shift towards renewable energy, experts warned that nearly $900 billion worth of reserves–or about one-third of the value of big oil and gas companies–were at risk of becoming worthless.

Even Big Oil mostly appeared resigned to its fate, with Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE:RDS.A) CEO Ben van Beurden declaring that we had already hit peak oil demand while BP Plc. (NYSE:BP)—a company that doubled down on its aggressive drilling right after the historic 2015 UN Climate Change Agreement--finally gave in saying “..concerns about carbon emissions and climate change mean that it is increasingly unlikely that the world’s reserves of oil will ever be exhausted.” BP went on to announce one of the largest asset writedowns of any oil major after slashing up to $17.5 billion off the value of its assets and conceded that it “expects the pandemic to hasten the shift away from fossil fuels.” 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

Why the World Worries About Russia’s Nord Stream Pipeline

BUSINESS: 25/02/2021 10:45 GMT

Despite Its Pledges, Shell Funded Anti-Climate Lobbying Last Year

The oil giant belonged to one group that pushed for a rule designed to preempt banks’ policies against lending for Arctic drilling and coal mining.

• By Luke Barratt
• Alexander C. Kaufman, HuffPost US

Royal Dutch Shell vowed last September to reach net-zero carbon pollution in its business by 2050. The goal was vague but notable, and seemed to become more realistic when the corporation announced earlier this month that its crude oil production had peaked in 2019 and would likely never increase again. 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

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