I've been seeing a lot of people talk about Shell's report yesterday as good news for the end of the oil age. Let's actually read Shell's report on their future planning:
(I know it's easy to click on the first news headline you see about a topic, but if there is a primary source, you should always read that. Most of the people I've seen discussing this are sharing the New York Times coverage of this, which portrays Shell as transitioning into a green future. I think this is a hopeful/delusional perspective that facilitates a neoliberal march into Progress.
In my perspective on this report, Shell intentionally decreasing production to increase the value per gallon of oil to meet shareholder dividend demands. Promises of reinvestment are into natural gas, today. Promises of reinvestment in renewable energy are a "if that doesn't work" promise and are not likely to be approved by voting shareholders.
This limited production is being credited to declining capacity in extant reserves, but that claim is suspicious: new technologies are increasing our reserve capacity, year-over-year, and reducing extraction costs. It is more likely that the attempt to increase the commodity value of oil is to attract investors who are leaving the euphoric bull equities market and looking for value assets in which to rest the liquidity.
There are signals to be inferred from this report, but I do not see any signals about the environment here, just market stuff.
Header image by Jasper Juinen, copyright 2018 Bloomberg Finance JP
