‘Drill, baby, drill’ is the new mantra of Big Oil – and now it’s coming after EVs

Have you ever gone back over your new year’s resolutions from years ago and just thought, “What was I thinking?” Over the last year, it seems that Europe’s biggest oil corporations did just that. Suppliers are planning to flood the market seemingly right up until the sea level rise literally inundates many of the world’s major oil ports Similarly, Shell has swapped its investments in offshore wind power for gas, with plans to increase its LNG business by 20-30 per cent by 2030. In the background of Cop29, Brazil’s state-owned Petrobras announced plans to spend close to $8bn to increase its oil and gas production by 14 per cent over the next four years, while Donald Trump spent the entire US election campaign arguing that he alone would get America producing more energy, when the reality that the US is now producing more oil every day than any country has, ever. Add on Trump’s plans to “drill baby, drill” since then, and who knows just how high this market distortion could become, with the suppliers planning to flood the market seemingly right up until the sea level rise literally inundates many of the world’s major oil ports. In the world’s biggest car market, electric vehicles now regularly represent more than half of all cars sold each month, and oil demand last year may have dropped to 3.6 per cent lower than in pre-Covid levels.