What’s Next For Big Oil?
- The global COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant role to play in Big Oil’s shift towards cleaner energy.
- Three of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies are planning to become net-zero carbon emitters by 2050.
- Tech will not only help Big Oil become more efficient–it may turn out to be instrumental for their net-zero ambitions.
Something unthinkable is happening in Big Oil, and it’s not the demand slump or the spending cuts or the layoffs. With the exception of the demand slump, we’ve seen all this before–more than once, in fact. No, what’s unthinkable is that Big Oil appears to be planning to stop being Big Oil.
It’s not a joke. Three of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies are planning to become net-zero carbon emitters by 2050. And, as Energy Intelligence noted recently in an industry analysis, there are only two ways to attain the net-zero state: reduce the production of oil and gas, and capture the already emitted carbon dioxide.
The three top performers in the field seem to be focusing on the first way. Shell, BP, and Total—along with Italy’s Eni and Spain’s Repsol—all plan to boost their output of renewable energy at the expense of oil significantly over the next few decades. And the U.S. supermajors, as reluctant as they have been to join the green wave in energy, might at some point simply be forced to do it by their shareholders and by the new, post-coronavirus world order.
It would be an understatement to say that the pandemic had some role to play in the transformation looming over the energy industry as we know it. The pandemic, and the oil demand slump it brought on the industry, had a significant role to play in that transformation. The extent and speed of this demand slump were literally unprecedented, but now that the precedent has been set, Big Oil is preparing for the future.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
