Investors Are Moving To New Energy

The End Of Big Oil Spending; Global spending on renewables is quickly catching up to oil and gas

Tim McDonnell, March 22, 2021 (Quartz)

“…[Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest state-owned oil company, reported] a 44% decline in net profits in 2020 thanks to the pandemic. With global oil demand unlikely to bounce fully back until at least 2022, the company said it will shave up to $10 billion off its capital spending plans this year… ExxonMobil announced a similarly-sized spending cut…Globally, fossil fuel companies’ spending on “upstream” activities (finding and producing oil and gas) fell by nearly one-third in 2020…Meanwhile, spending on solar and wind farms is setting new records and catching up fast. In 2019, global renewables spending was nearly 60% below upstream oil and gas; in 2021, the gap is projected to be just 22%...

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…Oil and gas spending will likely rise a bit with the post-pandemic economic recovery, but the gap to renewables will continue to narrow as oil companies contend with the long-term contraction of their market. Since the beginning of 2020, leading oil majors have written down the value of their fossil-producing assets by more than $100 billion…[They are] focusing on their lowest-cost sources of production and not hunting for new sources…Renewables, however, are in a period of rapid growth as costs fall and demand surges for zero-carbon electricity…” click here for more

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