The ‘super major’ oil companies collectively known as Big Oil are have a time of itlargely because of the pandemic, of course, but also because we are fast moving towards one after the Peak Oil era. Great oil know this, and it does what it can to say what’s next.
Take Royal Dutch Shell, one of the seven so-called “supermajor” oil companies including Big Oil, which was shaken up this summer afterwards had to write off $ 22 billion after cratering of demand. And while that was largely attributed to the pandemic at the time, Shell and other oil and gas companies have also tried to diversify.
This meant investments in the electricity supply chain, the latest being Shell’s purchase of Ubitricity, which operates the largest car charging network in Britain.
Of the Financial times Monday:
Shell said Monday it would buy 100 percent of the company for an undisclosed amount. Founded in Germany, Ubitricity is a leading European provider of street charging for electric vehicles.
The company, which integrates electric vehicle charging into street infrastructure such as lamp posts, has more than 2,700 charging points in the UK, making it aarket share of 13 percent.
Shell said the acquisition would help it expand to street charging. It already has more than 1,000 fast and ultra-fast charging points at 430 Shell service stations and a greater number, including those of partners and affiliates at service stations and motorway service stations.
Subject to regulatory approval, the deal is expected to close later this year.
Seven hundred charging points are not that many, and 13 percent of the market is not that much either, as ‘the market’ for electric vehicles in Britain is a single digit percentage compared to internally combusted cars, but when large multinational corporations moving their money is always the best indicator of where they think the future is going.
G / O Media can receive a commission
Testing rainbow umbrella
You say that he did not sit cupidat that lorem ipsum dolor am, with some great pain, pain in the long reprehe nderittur adipissmod.
One of the biggest oil companies in the world thinks this electric thing has legs, or at least enough to hedge its bets a bit. See you at the Shell station in 2050 as we hook up our vintage Teslas.