Strategic choice for oil and gas companies under the vision of carbon neutrality

Abstract

Since 2020, the COVID-19 has accelerated the process of global energy transition. The production and operation of oil and gas companies have been constrained by both climate change and market decline, and the lowcarbon transformation strategy has attracted widespread attention. Based on the analysis of the background of strategic transformation of oil and gas companies, the strategic choice under the vision of carbon neutrality was discussed in detail, which is mainly divided into five aspects: (1) Significantly reduce capital expenditure, investment attitude is more prudent. (2) Large-scale asset impairment operations, the scale of a decade of record high. (3) Focus more on upstream and downstream core assets, and further transform to low carbon terminal. (4) Different types of oil companies have adopted different clean and low-carbon strategies. Among them, European oil companies prefer to develop diversified clean and lowcarbon businesses, American oil companies pay more attention to Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and other businesses, and some national oil companies also put forward short and medium term emission reduction targets to follow the trend of energy transition. (5) The heat of oil and gas mergers and acquisitions has slowed down significantly, and low-carbon mergers and acquisitions are favored. Finally, some suggestions were put forward for Chinese oil and gas companies, providing reference for the sustainable development of Chinese oil and gas enterprises.

Keywords

• peak carbon dioxide emissions
• carbon neutrality
• energy transition
• oil and gas companies
• strategic choices
• upstream and downstream
• low-carbon
• merger and acquisition