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Asia-Pacific markets slip; oil costs drop

Asia-Pacific markets slip; oil prices drop

SINGAPORE – Asia Pacific stocks were lower Friday after major Wall Street indices fell overnight.

In Japan, the NIkkei 225 was down 0.87% while the Topix index was down 0.78%.

Japan’s core consumer prices fell 0.6% year-on-year in January, the country’s statistics bureau announced on Friday. According to Reuters, this was the sixth consecutive month of annual declines.

The markets in mainland China were mixed, with the Shanghai composite hovering above the flatline while the Shenzhen component fell 0.206%. The Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong fell 0.48%.

South Korea’s Kospi lost 0.94%.

Australian stocks fell as the S&P / ASX 200 fell 1.13%.

Australian retail sales in January rose by a seasonally adjusted 0.6% compared to the previous month. That comes from preliminary retail sales figures released by the country’s statistics bureau on Friday. That was lower than expected in a Reuters poll for a 2% increase.

MSCI’s broadest index for stocks in the Asia-Pacific region outside of Japan was down 0.42%.

Oil prices are falling

Oil prices fell on the morning of Friday morning trading hours in Asia as the international reference Brent crude oil futures fell 1.77% to $ 62.80 a barrel. The US crude oil futures fell 2.16% to $ 59.21 a barrel.

The US dollar index, which tracks the greenback versus a basket of its peers, was 90.573 as it fell from above 90.9 earlier in the week.

The Japanese yen was trading at 105.65 per dollar, stronger than above 106 against the greenback earlier this week. The Australian dollar changed hands at $ 0.7762 after rising from around $ 0.78 to below $ 0.774 this week.

– CNBC’s Jeff Cox contributed to this report.

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Business

Shell Says Its Oil Manufacturing Has Peaked and Is Prone to Decline

Shell Says Its Oil Production Has Peaked and Is Likely to Decline

Royal Dutch Shell made the boldest statement among its peers on Thursday about the decline of the oil age, saying its production peaked in 2019 and is now expected to gradually decline.

Shell’s “total oil production peaked in 2019” and will now decrease by 1 to 2 percent annually, the company said in a statement.

The announcement, part of the fine print of a presentation on future clean energy goals, marks a turning point for one of the world’s leading oil companies in the 19th century. And it underscores a point that the company’s CEO Ben van Beurden has made for years: To stay in business, Shell needs to be seen as part of the solution, not the cause of climate change.

As Europe’s largest oil and gas producer, Shell was skeptical about how willing or able it would be to break away from its roots. Indeed, like other oil chiefs, Mr van Beurden is trying to draw the fine line between promoting green commitments and continuing to promote the oil and gas units that produce most of Shell’s money.

“Even if the world is decarbonised, it will still need oil and gas for decades,” said van Beurden on Thursday at a presentation of the company’s new strategy. Oil and gas, he said, “will help fund Shell’s transformation.”

The momentum for change is increasing significantly. In Europe in particular, the pandemic is proving to be a catalyst for more action by energy companies and others.

Demand for oil has picked up somewhat since the collapse last spring, and oil futures returned to pre-pandemic levels on Monday. However, Shell and other companies clearly understand that oil is no longer the mainstay they can count on and are therefore investing more in renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and hydrogen.

European oil companies are all moving in roughly the same direction with regard to fossil fuel production, with some different approaches. BP said last year that it would likely cut oil and gas production by 40 percent by 2030. Last year the company’s production declined 10 percent, largely due to the sale of oil fields.

Shell said Thursday that its carbon emissions would likely have peaked in 2018 and that it would step up its previously announced efforts to reach zero net carbon emissions by 2050 with tougher intermediate targets.

The company also stressed that its emissions reduction targets would include those of the products it sold to customers. That said, in attempting to reduce net carbon emissions to zero, Shell will consider not only the emissions generated in its business, but also the gases emitted from the exhaust pipes of cars using fuels marketed by Shell. Burning and other uses of fuel that shell sold Make up 90 percent of the company’s emissions.

The announcement received praise from activist investors but disappointed some environmentalists who want a faster transformation.

Adam Matthews, director of ethics and engagement for the Church of England Pensions Board, said Shell’s plans to meet its 2050 goals are the “most comprehensive” in the industry. “There’s no room for maneuver,” said Matthews, who encouraged Shell to cut emissions on behalf of a group of institutional investors called Climate Action 100+.

Shell takes a slightly different approach than its Paris-based rivals BP and Total, who recently looked into renewable energy projects like wind and solar at prices that are sometimes viewed as high.

Instead, Shell wants to help customers cope with the complexities of reducing their own carbon emissions. In retail, this could be because they plug their electric vehicles into Shell’s growing network of 60,000 charging stations, or they fill vehicles with hydrogen, a clean fuel that Shell has been promoting for years and is becoming increasingly popular.

Shell also wants to leverage its large energy trading unit and other capabilities to provide businesses with clean electricity and other low-carbon fuels, and to help them with other needs. For example, van Beurden said he could foresee Shell’s growing know-how in capturing emissions and storing gases underground – so-called carbon capture technology – which would become a service that Shell could offer. They’re ready to put money into clean power generation like wind farms, but Shell executives say they don’t think owning renewable assets will necessarily be a big money maker.

“We believe that developing the right products and solutions for customers has more value than just generating green electricity,” said van Beurden when he called reporters on Thursday.

According to analysts, Shell’s relatively cautious approach to renewable investments came as no surprise, as the stock prices of companies that have moved into these areas recently seem not to benefit. Shell said it plans to invest $ 2 to 3 billion a year in renewables like wind and solar, as well as clean power plants, a small portion of the capital investment of up to $ 22 billion.

“Despite the green spin, the substance would suggest a more cautious approach to renewable energy,” said Stuart Joyner, an analyst at Redburn, a market research firm.

Although Shell says oil production has peaked, natural gas flows will keep all fossil fuel production flat. The company views liquefied natural gas, a marine fuel, as a vital business in which it is a global leader and as a transition fuel between petroleum and renewables.

Shell said Thursday that it plans to spend $ 8 billion on oil and gas development and $ 4 billion on its natural gas facility annually in the near future.

The prospect that Europe’s largest oil company will continue to pump fossil fuels for a long time drew fire from some environmentalists.

Greenpeace UK said in a statement that Shell’s strategy could not be successful or “taken seriously” without specific commitments to cut production. Greenpeace also called Shell’s plans to offset emissions through the establishment and protection of forests and wetlands “delusional”.

Mr Matthews of the Church of England said the increasingly detailed plans of European oil companies to reduce emissions were a huge step forward from three years ago, when such discussions were barely going on.

“Things have moved a lot during that time,” he said.

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Health

Baker Hughes is ‘cautiously optimistic’ on oil demand

Baker Hughes is 'cautiously optimistic' on oil demand

Mobile offshore drilling units stand in the port of Cromarty Firth in Cromarty, UK on Tuesday 23 June 2020.

Jason Alden | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Oil services company Baker Hughes sees energy demand recover in the second half of 2021, managing director Lorenzo Simonelli said this week.

“We are cautiously optimistic,” he told CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick on Monday.

He noted that some countries are still linked to coronavirus, which decimated demand in 2020 and may weigh on fuel sales in the first half of the year.

However, he expects demand to recover in the second half of the year due to the launch of the vaccine and the improvement in the economic situation.

The CEO’s views were in line with OPEC’s January oil market report that vaccinations generate some “upside optimism” and that forecasts for 2021 “assume a healthy recovery in economic activity”.

The alliance expects global oil demand to increase by 5.9 million barrels per day to an average of 95.9 million barrels per day.

The International Energy Agency predicts that global oil demand will recover this year to 96.6 million bdp. It lowered its forecast slightly, citing rising Covid cases and new bans.

As vaccines put fundamentals on a stronger growth path, it will take longer for demand to fully recover, the IEA said.

Opportunities in oil investments

Simonelli said there would be “investment opportunities” when the rebound takes place.

“It will be different geographically in different places,” he said. “If we look at the lower-cost pools, look at the Middle East. That is where you will see some of the increases in production.”

Brazil and Norway could also increase production in the second half of 2021, he added.

US shale producers are likely to be “subdued,” he said. “There is a lot of capital discipline [and] Obviously we are also going through an energy transition. “

He said North America would grow in volume quickly historically, but that could change this time around.

“We believe this will be different just given the capital discipline and focus that producers have on … returns and cash flows and restricting some of the capital inflows,” he said.

US West Texas Intermediate Futures rose 0.99% to $ 54.08 on Tuesday afternoon in Asia, while the international benchmark Brent crude oil futures rose 0.89% to trade at $ 56.85.

– CNBC’s Sam Meredith contributed to this report.

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Health

Does Coconut Oil Deserve Its Well being Halo?

Does Coconut Oil Deserve Its Health Halo?

Dr. Greenland reiterated this assessment, noting that “The marketing of coconut oil is confusing. Attempts are made to sell it as healthy fat, but those who know its composition do not believe it at all. “

These and other experts separate themselves from advertisers and proponents of coconut oil because of its chemical makeup and the well-established biological activity of various types of fatty acids.

“Fat can’t circulate on its own,” said Dr. Greenland, explaining that long-chain fatty acids, such as those found in beef tallow, are absorbed into the bloodstream by fat-carrying particles called chylomicrons, which release the fat to tissues throughout the body. Chylomicrons keep LDL cholesterol in circulation and provide ample opportunity to get stuck in the arteries. In contrast, fats that are mainly medium-chain fatty acids are more water-soluble. They can be absorbed into the bloodstream without the help of chylomicrons and transported directly to the liver, where they are used for energy.

Although lauric acid is usually called a medium chain fatty acid, according to Dr. Sacks really arbitrary. “The classification of lauric acid as a medium-chain fatty acid is a misnomer,” he wrote. “Instead of the number of carbon atoms in a fat,” he said, “what counts is how the fat is metabolized in the body. Lauric acid acts like a long-chain fatty acid that promotes atherosclerosis. In addition, coconut oil contains two other long-chain fatty acids – myristic and palmitic – and all three have arterial damaging effects on blood cholesterol levels.

One claim for coconut oil is undisputed: it can increase blood HDL cholesterol, which has long been believed to protect against heart disease. However, clear health benefits of HDL cholesterol in humans have yet to be demonstrated. Dr. Sacks reported: “Genetic studies and HDL-increasing drugs have so far not confirmed any causal link between HDL cholesterol and cardiovascular disease. HDL consists of a large number of sub-particles that can have adverse or beneficial effects. It is not known what foods or nutrients that increase HDL cholesterol do so in ways that reduce atherosclerosis and coronary events. “

The same goes for Dr. Greenland. “Efforts to increase HDL have not resulted in beneficial clinical improvements.”

Proponents also like to cite the fact that a number of indigenous peoples – including Polynesians, Melanesians, Sri Lankans, and Indians – consume fairly large amounts of coconut products without suffering from cardiovascular disease. However, most of these people have traditionally eaten coconut meat or pressed coconut cream as part of a diet that is low in processed foods and high in fruits and vegetables, with fish being the main source of protein. They are also much more physically active than typical westerners.

But that is also changing now, reported a New Zealand research team. The “imports of unhealthy foods like corned beef, fast foods and processed ingredients are driving huge increases in obesity and ill health.”

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Business

‘A Slap within the Face’: The Pandemic Disrupts Younger Oil Careers

‘A Slap in the Face’: The Pandemic Disrupts Young Oil Careers

HOUSTON – Sabrina Burns, a senior at the University of Texas at Austin, thought that in a few months after graduating, she would embark on a lucrative career in the oil and gas industry.

But the collapse in demand for oil and gas during the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted their well-designed plans, forcing them to consider a new avenue.

“We got a slap in the face, a completely unforeseen situation that shook our entire mindset,” said Ms. Burns, who studies petroleum engineering. “Like all of my classmates, I applied for every oil and gas site I saw and nothing really came up. I am discouraged. “

With fewer people commuting and traveling, the oil and gas industry has suffered a severe blow. Oil companies have laid off more than 100,000 workers. Many companies have closed refineries and some have filed for bankruptcy protection.

The industry has drawn thousands of young people with the promise of secure careers in recent years as shale drilling began and made the United States the world’s largest oil producer. But many students and graduates say they are no longer sure that there is a place for them in the industry. Even after the pandemic ends, some of them fear that growing climate change concerns will lead to an inevitable decline in oil and gas.

These students seek elite positions in an oil and gas industry that employs approximately two million people. Even after the most recent layoffs, oil companies still employ more people than the fast-growing wind and solar companies, which together employ at least 370,000 people, according to trade groups.

Ms. Burns, 22, said her choices had narrowed significantly over the past nine months. With oil and gas options limited, she recently took on an internship with an engineering firm specializing in energy conservation and may have applied to a graduate school in environmental sciences. She is also considering moving in with her sister after graduation to save money.

“I have a feeling companies are going to be pretty careful when it comes to hiring new employees,” she said.

Ms. Burns was lured into an oil and gas career by stories told by her father, a helicopter pilot, about the successful engineers he met while servicing offshore drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. But while her professors have been talking about the future of oil and gas companies, she is concerned.

Even before the pandemic, Ms. Burns said, she had some doubts about her chosen industry. Other students, and even an Uber driver who took them and others to an oil industry banquet in 2018, asked questions about the future of oil and gas and why renewable energies might be a better choice.

“Have you ever heard of a solar panel?” She remembers the Uber driver who asked her and her friends.

“The silent judgment and the passing comments weighed on me,” she added. Her parents persuaded her to stick with her program, and Ms. Burns said she was committed to the industry and working to improve her environmental performance.

“I hope that at some point I will be able to use all of my skills and knowledge,” she said.

Stephen Zagurski, a PhD student in geology at Rice University, said the timing of his graduation in the coming weeks was “not perfect, far from it”.

“You have a shortage of vacancies and you have a huge talent pool and an abundance of graduates leaving school,” he added. “It will make it difficult to get into the industry.”

However, 23-year-old Zagurski said the oil and gas industry will bounce back, as it has done many times over the last century, despite popular belief that the pandemic would permanently reduce energy consumption habits. “Demand will come back,” he said. “Let’s face it here, how many things in our daily lives contain some type of petroleum-based product.”

Mr. Zagurski is interning with Roxanna Oil, a small company with managers who are his second cousins, and has been given increasing levels of responsibility.

He can likely come to Roxanna full time after graduation and is confident that the market for young geoscientists and engineers will eventually recover. If the oil industry does not recover, he is also considering working or doing a PhD in geothermal or environmental science. “Everyone is waiting for their time to see what will happen,” he said.

Myles Hampton Arvie, a senior at the University of Houston studying finance and accounting, wanted to follow his father into the oil and gas industry.

“Energy and gas are something that I love,” he said. “Oil and gas are not going anywhere for the next 20 or 30 years. So why not be a part of it while we make this clean energy transition?”

His father was a project manager on offshore fields in the Gulf of Mexico. Mr. Arvie is interested in an office job and has completed two internships at EY, also known as Ernst & Young. He has created financial models, conducted audits, and refined financial statements for several American and Canadian oil companies. He became vice chairman of the Energy Coalition, a student group that hosts educational and job fairs for students.

Mr. Arvie drew enough attention to land interviews with several oil and gas companies, but one vacancy turned out to be elusive. “It’s very competitive,” he said, and the downturn has only made it harder to get a position.

Arvie, 22, who is due to graduate in May, has switched careers to take a position at JPMorgan Chase, where he is expected to work in derivatives and marketing in the tech industry. However, one day he could find a place in the energy industry.

“I’m a little disappointed,” he said. “But you have to keep it moving.”

Clayton Brown, a graduate student at the University of Houston studying petroleum geology, recalls finding an article online four years ago claiming that the future is no better for geologists studying underground oil and gas reserves could look.

“I saw the salary petroleum geologists make and immediately got interested,” said Mr. Brown.

At Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington, NC, Mr. Brown studied geology at Western Colorado University. He was fascinated by the science behind seismic testing and rock and sand formations.

Confident in his career choice, he borrowed tens of thousands of dollars to continue his education.

Mr. Brown, 23, has $ 55,000 in student debt. By the time he graduates next fall, he will owe about $ 70,000. To make matters worse, the small oil company he interned at recently stopped paying him as it reduced the cost of managing the downturn.

He moved back to North Carolina to live with his parents while taking classes and mailing out résumés online. “Covid was pretty much the curveball,” he said. “Nobody expects a virus to destroy the oil industry.”

Even so, he said he had no regrets and called the downturn “just bad timing”.

Tosa Nehikhuere, the son of Nigerian immigrants, was relatively lucky. Shortly after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin in 2018, he joined a major European oil company and worked in various internships and jobs on site and on the trading platform.

But it’s been such an unsafe ride that he’s already worried about the direction he’s headed in college.

Mr. Nehikhuere’s parents were poor in Nigeria. They moved to New York, where Mr. Nehikhuere’s father drove a taxi. They eventually made their way to Houston, where life was cheaper and his parents had careers in nursing.

They embraced the oil business that dominates Texas and their homeland and pushed their son into petroleum engineering. It is a common path of immigrants and first and second generation Americans in Texas.

In the middle of Mr. Nehikhuere’s freshman year of study, the Saudi-led Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries flooded the world market with oil in an attempt to undercut the booming American shale oil drilling industry and bring prices down.

“It was pretty nerve-wracking,” he recalled. “I’ve seen seniors get frozen with three internships at the same company. Juniors, sophomore students struggling to get internships. All in all, it was pretty bad in terms of job prospects. “

Mr Nehikhuere was considering switching majors, but he expected oil prices to recover, as they had so often, through most of 2018 and 2019.

But the coronavirus pandemic set in as Mr Nehikhuere’s career took off, and now he’s worried again.

Mr Nehikhuere, 24, did not want to identify his employer but said he is laying off workers and debating how aggressively he should move away from oil and gas to renewable energy.

If the company is moving quickly towards clean energy, he is not sure there will be a place for him. “How much will my skills be transferred?”

“There will be a significant number of layoffs, changes and outsourcing,” he added. “To be honest, I don’t know if it will affect me or not. It’s really in the air. “

Mr Nehikhuere is already considering a change and may be looking for a job with a consulting firm or a company providing technology to oil and gas companies.

“As I think more and more about my career, the volatility that comes with working for an oil and gas company can be very worrying,” he said. “I prefer something more stable.”

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Business

‘Is Exxon a Survivor?’ The Oil Big Is at a Crossroads.

‘Is Exxon a Survivor?’ The Oil Giant Is at a Crossroads.

HOUSTON – For the past 135 years, Exxon Mobil has survived hostile governments, ill-fated investments, and the disastrous Exxon Valdez oil spill. From all of this, the oil company made wads of money.

But suddenly Exxon is slipping badly, its long latent weaknesses being exposed by the coronavirus pandemic and technological changes that promise to transform the energy world amid growing concerns about climate change.

The company, one of America’s most profitable and valuable companies for decades, lost $ 2.4 billion in the first nine months of the year, and its stock price has fallen about 35 percent that year. In August, Exxon was removed from the industrial average by Dow Jones and replaced by Salesforce, a software company. The move symbolized the handover of the baton from Big Oil to an increasingly dominant technology industry.

“Is Exxon a Survivor?” asked Jennifer Rowland, an energy analyst with Edward Jones. “Of course they are with great global fortune, great people, and great technical know-how. But the question is really, can they thrive? This is very skeptical at the moment. “

Exxon is increasingly under pressure from investors. DE Shaw, a longtime shareholder who recently increased its stake in Exxon, is calling for the company to cut costs and improve its environmental footprint, according to one informed person. Another activist investor, Engine No. 1, urges similar changes supported by the California State Teachers Retirement System and the Church of England. And on Wednesday, New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli said the state’s $ 226 billion pension fund was selling stakes in oil and gas companies that weren’t moving fast enough to reduce emissions.

Of course, every oil company is grappling with the collapse in energy needs this year, and as world leaders, including President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., they commit to addressing climate change. In addition, many utility companies, automakers, and other companies have committed to significantly reducing or eliminating the use of fossil fuels, the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, and have turned to wind, solar, and electric vehicles.

European companies like Royal Dutch Shell and BP have already started moving away from fossil fuels. But Exxon, like most American oil companies, has doubled its exposure to oil and gas and is investing relatively little in technologies that could help slow climate change.

As recently as last month, Exxon reiterated that it plans to increase fossil fuel production, albeit at a slower pace. The company is investing billions of dollars in oil and gas production in the Permian Basin, which stretches across Texas and New Mexico, as well as offshore fields in Guyana, Brazil and Mozambique.

Exxon committed to its strategy despite acknowledging that one of its previous big bets wasn’t going well. Exxon announced it would write off the value of its natural gas assets, most of which were purchased around 2010, by up to $ 20 billion. The company is laying off around 14,000 workers, or 15 percent of its total, over the next year to cut costs and protect a dividend it has increased every year for nearly four decades up to this year.

However, if this crisis poses an existential threat, Exxon’s executive suite, still known within the company as the “God Pod,” has not been recognized.

“Despite the current volatility and short-term uncertainty, the long-term fundamentals that drive our business remain strong and unchanged,” said Darren W. Woods, chairman and CEO of the company since 2017, at a recent annual general meeting.

Exxon is known in the oil world as an island company with a rigid culture that slows adoptive, decisive change. It has been so since John D. Rockefeller founded the company as Standard Oil in the late 19th century, a monopoly that was later dissolved by the government.

As a trained accountant, Rockefeller has introduced a deep commitment to numerical calculations that remains in the company’s DNA. Exxon is mostly run by engineers who typically work their way up to managerial positions. The executives are determined to overcome all conceivable hurdles such as oil embargoes, wars and OPEC sanctions. Such trust may be required to run a business that does business in dangerous or inhospitable locations.

As a trained electrical engineer and 28-year-old company veteran, Mr. Woods speaks with the same confidence as his better-known predecessors. But he has made less of a profile than Lee R. Raymond, who dismissed climate change concerns in the 1990s and early 2000s, and Rex W. Tillerson, whose international prowess helped him become President Trump’s first secretary of state between 2006 and 2016.

While Mr. Raymond and Mr. Tillerson were dominant figures in the industry, they left Mr. Woods with many problems that were at least partially obscured by higher oil and gas prices.

Mr. Raymond’s public skepticism about climate change damaged the company’s reputation. Mr. Tillerson was slow to take advantage of the shale drilling to stimulate the American oil industry. His foray into the former Soviet Union and Iraq turned out to be an expensive failure. When he bought XTO for over $ 30 billion a decade ago to gain fracking expertise and valuable natural gas fields, gas prices were at their peak. As the price of commodities fell in recent years, the company lost money and wrote off much of the investment over the past month.

“Darren Woods inherited a company that has been placing big bets in recent years that have been unsuccessful,” said Fadel Gheit, a retired Wall Street analyst who worked as a research and development engineer prior to its merger with Exxon in 1999 Was mobile.

“Exxon Mobil is like a big cruise ship,” he added. “You can’t change course overnight. You can weather the storm but you can’t go far. You need to transform to stay relevant. “

Economy & Economy

Updated

Apr. 10, 2020, 4:09 pm ET

Mr Raymond declined to comment. Mr. Tillerson did not respond to a request for comment. Exxon answered questions mainly by referring to previous public statements by Mr. Woods and the company.

Casey Norton, a company spokesman, said the acquisition of XTO “brought the people and technology in addition to potential resources” that helped the company thrive in shale fields in the Permian Basin.

In the early years of his tenure, Mr. Woods followed the strategy set out by Mr. Tillerson by borrowing and investing heavily to expand production. The pandemic forced Mr. Woods to change direction. The company now plans to spend a third less on exploration and production by 2025 than originally planned.

The changes Exxon is making may seem big in absolute terms, but seem tinkering when compared to the activities of European oil companies. BP has announced that it will increase its investment in low-carbon companies tenfold over the next decade to $ 5 billion a year while cutting oil and gas production by 40 percent. Royal Dutch Shell, Total of France and other European companies are taking similar steps at different speeds.

The only major American oil company getting close to setting European targets is Occidental Petroleum. The company recently pledged to achieve zero net carbon emissions by 2040 and use fuel by 2050. A facility is being built in Texas to capture carbon dioxide from the air and push crude oil out of the ground, keeping the greenhouse gas underground forever.

“We have moved from the slate era to the energy transition era, so there is greater divergence in strategy between companies, the greatest in modern times,” said Daniel Yergin, energy historian and author of The New Map : Energy, Climate and the Clash of Nations. “” Now the big debate is whether the oil summit will peak in the 2020s or 2030s or 2050s. “

Exxon executives have stated that an energy transition is underway and necessary. But they also claimed that it would make no sense for the company to get into the solar or wind energy business. Instead, the company invests in breakthrough technologies. One such project involves using algae to make fuel for trucks and airplanes. Exxon has talked about this project for years but has not yet started commercial production.

Exxon refineries could one day also become major hydrogen producers, which many experts believe could play an important role in reducing emissions. The company relies on carbon capture and sequestration. One project is to channel carbon emitted from industrial operations into a fuel cell that can generate electricity, reduce emissions and at the same time produce more electricity.

“Breakthroughs in these areas are critical to reducing emissions and would make a significant contribution to the achievement of the goals of the Paris Agreement, which we support,” Woods said in a message to staff in October, referring to the 2016 global climate agreement.

Energy experts said it is possible that Exxon could develop new uses for carbon dioxide, such as reinforcing concrete or making carbon fiber, which could replace steel and other materials.

“If Exxon and other big players in the oil industry crack these nuts, the whole discussion about hydrocarbons will change,” said Kenneth B. Medlock III, senior director at Rice University’s Center for Energy Studies. “This type of change is slow until it is no longer that way. Think of the wind and sun that were slow until they weren’t. “

A sharp spike in oil and gas prices could also allay some of the company’s concerns, at least temporarily. In the past few weeks, as oil prices have risen on optimism about a coronavirus vaccine, Exxon’s stock has soared.

Vijay Swarup, Exxon’s vice president of research and development, said in a recent interview that the company understood that it needed to cut emissions and develop better fuels, lubricants and plastics.

“As we develop this way to get there, we can’t stop providing affordable, scalable power,” said Swarup.

However, John Browne, a former BP executive director, said it was not clear that Exxon and the other major American corporations were reshaping their businesses appropriately for a low-carbon future.

“You can choose to just go ahead and harvest and say, ‘Let’s see what happens in the long run,” he said. “It’s a pretty risky strategy these days.”

Lauren Hirsch contributed to the coverage.