Julia Kilpatrick, Pembina Institute/flickr
Norway’s US$1.3-trillion sovereign wealth fund is following through on its threat to drop investments in Canadian tar sands/oil sands production, with four Alberta fossils showing up among the 15 companies the fund blacklisted last year, the Globe and Mail reports.
Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNRL), Cenovus Energy, Imperial Oil, and Suncor Energy all fell off Norway’s list, “sending yet another message that the era of Big Oil is coming to an end and the future belongs to renewable energy players,” the Globe and Mail reports.
Now, “the trend is clear and unsettling” for fossils everywhere, but particularly in the tar sands/oil sands, Reguly says. “Vanishing investors will make it harder for them to raise capital, boosting the cost of doing business. As their market values fall, index funds that seek out companies with big market values will have to give them a pass,” while rising carbon prices “will intensify the misery”. And reducing production emissions “can only go so far”, when by far the majority of the fossil industry’s carbon pollution occurs when its product reaches its final destination and is used as directed.
Reguly cites Vancouver-based Teck Resources as one company that is trying to sell off its tar sands/oil sands investment. But “unloading it won’t be easy in a market that is becoming aggressively anti-oil sands.” Other colossal fossils like BP are trying to shift their image and their operations from Big Oil to Big Energy, following a small number of companies that have made the switch so far.
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Five Colossal Fossils Lose $76 Billion in 2020 as Energy Transition Speeds Up
Five top colossal fossils—ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Chevron, and Total—lost a combined US$76 billion last year, almost all of it due to an accelerating transition off fossil fuels, analysts at Rystad Energy reported last month.
The companies’ combined output fell by 900,000 barrels of oil per day, or about 5%, Saudi Gazette reports. But out of the total loss, $69 billion “can be attributed to asset impairments and write-offs as the supermajors re-evaluated their strategy to focus on energy transition and become less dependent on petroleum.”