BP has continued its oscillating relationship with clean energy with a sudden pivot back to oil and gas under apparent shareholder pressure. However the stock market wasn’t terribly impressed with an immediate share price fall against a rising tide.

As I’ve said before, Big Oil is based on extracting, processing and distributing molecules when the world is increasingly embracing electronics. Transport, space heating, many industrial processes and much of our media is electrifying at great speed. Infrastructure, business models and expertise for ‘stuff’ will become redundant in an electric future. You don’t have to put electrons on a ship, train or wagon, electric vehicles don’t require spare parts the way internal combustion engines do, and chemical engineering nous won’t get you far when trying to balance the electricity grid.

In the old Beyond Petroleum days, BP experimented with ‘green’ molecules: biofuels, hydrogen and gas-plus-CCS (carbon capture and storage). None of these have delivered, usually banjaxed by the laws of physics, while electricity has powered (sorry) forwards with fast falling prices for solar and EV batteries.

The two aces that Big Oil holds are loads of cash and political oomph (some would argue it’s the same thing). They could transition if they wanted to, but it would involved abandoning everything they have and know and starting to compete against electric specialists (or buying them out). Businesses such as IKEA and Nokia have done this in the past, but before they became global brands; Apple and Netflix have evolved their businesses for the streaming age, but I can’t think of any business in my lifetime which has ripped up their rulebook and started again from scratch. I do know of plenty (Blockbuster, Kodak) who have paid the price for trying to follow the same course in a changing world.