Big Oil Is Past

In the 20^th century, finding oil made you rich. The prosperity of many people and nations has been generated with oil profits. Oil as a source of wealth is now rapidly becoming to its end, although oil companies still try to maintain their status. Their methods remind me very much of what tobacco industry did in the latter part of the 20^th century: although the scientific community has been quite unanimous about Climate change and the role of burning oil in generating it since 1970’s, the oil lobby has denied Climate change and presented pseudoscience suggesting that there is no interaction with oil burning and temperature change.

However, the oil companies are now seeing the end approaching. As a major indication is that investment companies are advising against buying oil stocks. As the latest big institutional investor, the New York Pension Fund (226 billion dollars) has indicated that it will sell all its oil and coal company stocks by 2040. Because oil use has dropped, so has oil price. Denmark just recently indicated that it will stop oil drilling by 2050 and also stop oil prospecting. In Finland, the national oil company is closing its second oil refinery next year.

Whenever any oil refinery, coalmine or power plant using fossil fuels including peat is closed, the local media are full of news complaining about the employment losses. It is naturally sad that people lose their work, but since the use of fossil fuels is not sustainable, it must be done. If the oil-dependent companies had prepared for the future, they would have started to develop commerce, which is not oil-dependent.

So big oil is past. What happens to the Middle Eastern countries, which are in the desert, but have become rich drilling oil?