Big Oil Is Betting the World Can’t Quit Fossil Fuels and Wall Street Is Buying In
The climate agenda just hit a speed bump that feels more like a brick wall. The International Energy Agency recently warned that without major policy changes, oil and gas demand will keep rising for the next 25 years, with little progress on cutting emissions. And Big Oil isn’t waiting to see if governments step in.
The long burn: The IEA’s latest World Energy Outlook signals a major shift from its earlier stance that fossil fuel demand would peak this decade. However, under the agency’s new “Current Policies” scenario, oil consumption would rise from 100M barrels a day in 2024 to 113M by 2050, driven by aviation, trucking, and petrochemicals. IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol believes this change reflects how “climate change is declining — and declining rapidly — in the international energy policy agenda. And this is happening while 2024 was the hottest year in history.”
- ExxonMobilXOM, ChevronCVX, and ConocoPhillipsCOP are ramping up fossil fuel production, betting the clean energy transition is still decades away.
- Natural gas demand is projected to grow well into the 2030s across all IEA models, with electricity use rising 40% by 2035 — most of that increase coming from solar-rich regions.
America’s Energy Heatwave
While tech investors chase the next AI unicorn, oil and natural gas have been quietly stealing the spotlight. An early US cold snap, strong LNG exports to Europe, and renewed fears over Russian supply cuts have pushed US natural gas prices up more than 70% in the past year, including a 50% spike in just the last three months. The ripple effects are spreading fast, rewarding the firms that never stopped drilling.
- Expand EnergyEXE, formed from the Chesapeake–Southwestern merger, saw Q3 sales surge 358% year-over-year, becoming the largest US natural gas producer and a standout growth story.
- OneokOKE, EQT CorpEQT, Diamondback EnergyFANG, and Coterra EnergyCTRA are riding the same momentum as power plants scramble to supply electricity to AI data centers.
Drilling into a comeback: The Trump administration is accelerating its fossil fuel agenda, preparing proposals to expand offshore drilling off California, Alaska, and the Eastern Gulf of Mexico. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum framed the plan as “driving job creation, bolstering economic growth, and strengthening American energy independence.” Meanwhile, the IEA warns the 1.5°C warming target is now “all but certain” to be exceeded within a decade, with any chance of limiting overshoot having “slipped out of reach.” The race to net zero isn’t over — but right now, oil’s leading the lap.