LThe book was titled Twilight in the Desert (“Twilight in the Desert”, 2005, untranslated), and the Texan oil banker, Matthew Simmons, predicted the end of oil in Saudi Arabia. This “Saudi oil shock to come”, the subtitle indicated, would shake up the global economy. In 2005, the year the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gases came into force, there were still experts predicting an imminent “peak oil”, then a rapid decline in consumption…
For twenty years, one certainty has become clear: the extinction of fossil fuels is inevitable, but the horizon is constantly receding. The Wahhabi kingdom remains the world’s second largest producer of crude oil and its largest exporter. Black gold is at its zenith, the world has never burned so much of it: 102 million barrels per day. Its consumption is likely to increase in the next ten years. And what happened in the Texan and Emirati deserts does not bode well.
At a time when countries were scrambling at COP28 in Dubai (United Arab Emirates) to include the prospect of a ” exit “ fossil fuels in the final agreement, two American oil companies announced their marriage. Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) will buy CrownRock for 12 billion dollars (11.13 billion euros). In October, ExxonMobil announced the acquisition of Pioneer for 60 billion and Chevron that of Hess for 53 billion.
“Dangerous distraction »
These giants would not put so much money on the table if these assets were promised to accelerate depreciation. The United States extracts more than 13 million barrels per day and has once again become the world’s leading producer of crude oil. They have found the key to saving the black gold: CO capture and storage (CSC)2 on an industrial scale. This is the new horizon of ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods, who regrets that the COPs have “focused on renewable energies for too long”.
It is also the horizon of Occidental Petroleum. In Texas, the Houston company is developing “Stratos”, the largest CCS project in the world: 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide trapped after their direct capture in the atmosphere, and not at the factory outlet, trumpets the CEO by Oxy, Vicki Hollub. This factory is backed by a carbon credit sales mechanism which has already involved Amazon, Airbus and the Houston Texans American football club.
Warren Buffet, who owns 25% of Oxy, has given his blessing to a site one hundred and twenty times larger than the similar “Mammoth” project built in Iceland. BlackRock invested $550 million in a project estimated at $1.1 billion. As for the Biden administration, it supports the technology. Mme Hollub thinks big: 100 factories. The NGOs denounce a “dangerous distraction” delaying the end of oil. Will “Stratos” be more successful than “Century”, launched in 2010 to capture carbon leaving a gas processing plant? The company has just closed it, failing to find profitability with technology that was simpler and more proven.