Fossil fuels being written off

From Unearthed.

It isn't just BP that's noticed fossil fuels are worth less than they used to be (Forbes). 

 

Exxon warned yesterday that low energy prices may wipe as much as one-fifth of its oil and natural gas reserves off the books. The company - which is not spinning this as anything green - has cut it's drilling budget by a huge $10bn  and already removed 1bn barrels of oil from it's reserves. It now warns another 4.5bn could follow. Separately, Chevron Corp. said in a filing Wednesday that it expects to revise its reserves downward by about 10%, mainly in the Permian Basin and Australia, Bloomberg reports. 

 

And it's not just oil. Peabody Energy has written $1.4bn off the value of the world’s largest coal mine, an acknowledgment of electricity generators’ permanent shift towards natural gas and wind, the FT notes. "The longer the pandemic plays out, the more early retirements [of coal-fired plants] and permanent demand destruction from coal we’ll see,” said Benjamin Nelson, a coal industry analyst at Moody’s.