By Barney Smith It is often said that the only people who really have the money to make the sort of difference necessary to achieve what change the climate requires are the Oil and Gas companies, like Shell, TotalEnergies and BP. If so, it follows that the outcome of their meetings become even more crucial. [...]
By Barney Smith It was Lenin who observed that there are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen. He was right. In March, shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, BP announced that it had decided to sell its’ 19.75 per cent stake in Rosneft, the Russian oil giant: a decision which could yet [...]
By Julian Singer Europe, including the UK, Norway and other non-EU countries, imports about 33 per cent of its gas from Russia. Not surprisingly, many studies have been made in the last month examining what would happen if Russia stopped its supply. In the short term Europe has the capacity to store up to 20 [...]
By Barney Smith There are several propositions which all seem to be true individually, yet pose more difficulty when viewed as collectively true. The first is that we are in the middle of an energy transition out of oil and gas, which are widely seen as declining assets: the second is the suggestion that, as [...]
By Barney Smith Just when it seemed safe to leave Big Oil to its own devices for a bit, Shell is involved in several actions which are sufficiently newsworthy that they cannot be ignored. On Thursday 30 July the company released figures for Q2 2021, which were the best figures for any quarter since 2018 [...]
By Barney Smith In the follow-up to the AGM, ExxonMobil finally had to concede not two, but three seats on the Board to the activist investor Engine No 1 which wanted the company to take more account of the energy transition, of climate change and its inevitable impact on the Oil and Gas industry. ExxonMobil [...]
By Julian Singer Angus Energy is a UK oil and gas company that operates three small oil fields in the Weald Basin of Sussex and Surrey, and which listed on AIM in 2016. In 2020 it acquired a majority interest in the dormant Saltfleetby gas field in Lincolnshire, and plans to install processing facilities so [...]
By Barney Smith According to the latest Review, which, unusually, came out this year in early July, 2020 was the most aberrant year ever, with primary energy use falling by 4.5 per cent and carbon emissions falling by more than 6 per cent, both being the fastest rate of decline since WWII. The US, India [...]
By Julian Singer The Climate Change Committee’s 2021 Report to Parliament on progress in reducing carbon emissions was highly critical of the government. While admitting that of all G20 countries the UK has so far achieved the largest reduction in emissions since 1990, and while praising the Climate Change Act (2008), the statutory commitment to [...]
By Barney Smith Greenbarrel shows its’ versatility by moving from the monsters of the oil world one week to a minnow the next. AIM-listed Zephyr Energy (whose worth is just under £47million @ the price of £3.84 on 9 June) announced on 7 June that it intends to achieve carbon-neutrality across its operational footprint by [...]