The oil industry has a history of successfully adapting to significant changes, the nationalisation of oil production in oil rich countries being a prime example. Yet oil majors seem to be willfully blind to the momentous shift afoot.
Following the trend of rising oil prices, oil giant’s investments in new oil projects increased in 2017. This is despite their rhetoric on climate change and — disproportionately small — investments in low-carbon technologies.
But demand for oil will increasingly be under pressure from the emergence of different transportation services and technologies, such as automated, electric and more fuel-efficient vehicles; new government policies to regulate air pollution; pressures on end markets, such as plastics; and slowing energy demand in China.
