Royal Dutch Shell and Total flirt with becoming utilities
Mar 28th 2018
IN AMERICA Big Oil remembers BP’s attempt to go “Beyond Petroleum” in the 2000s as a toe-curling embarrassment. In Europe it is seen as being ahead of its time. Once again the oil industry is experimenting with cross-dressing. Statoil, a Norwegian oil firm, is abandoning a name given to it almost 50 years ago to become the wispier Equinor. The firm formerly known as Dong, for Danish Oil and Natural Gas, is now Ørsted, a big wind firm named after the founder of electromagnetism.
Royal Dutch Shell and Total, Europe’s biggest private producers, are (mercifully) not changing their names. But they are toying with a strategy that could be far more adventurous—moving their core businesses from hydrocarbons to electrons.
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