When Big Oil Becomes Big Energy

French Total's CEO Christophe de Margerie recently said that 'oil and gas companies' should merely be called 'energy companies.' Big Oil could bring its expertise to the new energies including biofuels, nuclear and renewables, de Margerie explained at the London Oil and Money Conference last month. One can wonder if his rhetoric was just part of another charm offensive or if it really reflects on how much the fight against global warming is altering oil companies' business model and core activities.

Let's take a concrete example: oil and gas companies' involvement in geo-sequestration of carbon dioxide applied to natural gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects. The concept is to remove the CO2 occurring in the gas stream and inject it in underground rock formations at these project locations, rather than vent it to the atmosphere. Most of the big oil and gas players including Royal Dutch Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, Statoil and Total are operating an upstream carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) project. These schemes are at different scales of development, some are just pilot projects such as Total's CCS project at Lacq, in the South of France while some are already commercially viable such as Statoil's Snohvit liquefaction plant which began sequestering some 700,000 tons/yr of CO2 last year. Chevron, Shell and Exxon Mobil are also working on a massive CCS plan for their 15 million ton/yr Gorgon LNG facility in Australia which is expected to inject and store some 3.4 million tons/yr of carbon dioxide.

In absence of a price on carbon which would accelerate the deployment of CCS technology, big majors are inclined to see CCS as a green pass to pollute more. But at the same time they are contributing actively to research & development in the sector and participate to worldwide initiatives to cooperate and share information in view to improve the technology. Integrating a green agenda is certainly part of a public diplomacy strategy to make 'big oil' acceptable again, but doing so they are learning how to swim in the Copenhagen mindset and the world may benefit from it.

Fossil fuels have still a long way to go and getting rid of the fossil token in the companies' appellation doesn't mean that oil and gas activities are going to disappear any time soon, on the contrary they will keep growing while keeping a low profile and cohabiting with other energies. What is increasingly clearer is that energy companies will have to adapt to a low-carbon world and take into account not only new environmental regulations but also increased public awareness towards global warming. This is a revolution.