Oil Companies Take Trillion-Dollar Gamble

Investors are being urged to warn oil companies that they are risking trillions of dollars in exploiting oil fields that will probably never be profitable - and to consider selling their shares if the companies fail to listen to them.

A report out today from the Carbon Tracker Initiative, a not-for-profit organisation of specialists who assess climate risk in today’s financial markets, says it was surprised to find that many of the investments by oil companies were financially dubious - even without taking into account climate change factors.

To justify the high capital costs of extracting oil from shale deposits, oil sands, ultra-deep sea sites and Arctic regions, the companies are making assumptions that the price of oil of will rise and stay high.

Oil Companies Take Trillion-Dollar Gamble