Why is it so difficult to abandon oil?

The Indian ship ‘Nanda Devi’, loaded with liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), arrived at the port of Vadinar, in the district of Jamnagar, state of Gujarat, on March 17, 2026, after Iran allowed it to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, an important energy corridor that remains interrupted due to the war in the Middle East. The Indian flagged oil tankers ‘Shivalik’ and ‘Nanda Devi’, carrying around 92,700 metric tons of LPG, arrived at the ports of the state of Gujarat, representing a rare exception in the commercial passage through this strategic point. AFP When, in 2023, the international community committed to starting a transition away from fossil fuels in order to stop climate change, some celebrated this as the beginning of the end of oil. 🗒️ Do you have any reporting suggestions? Send to g1 Three years later, the war in the Middle East shows that the world’s dependence on “black gold” has not changed, despite its consequences going far beyond the environmental impact. The global economy and energy security are at risk. Does this cause the conflict to be used as yet another reason to definitively replace the person most responsible for CO emissions? by renewable energy, 167 years after the extraction of the first commercial barrel in Pennsylvania, in the United States. See the videos that are trending on g1 However, despite some appeals, the global trend indicates that the promise of COP28 is far from being fulfilled. The policy of US President Donald Trump is an example of this: after coining the slogan “drill, baby, drill”, he intervened in two countries rich in oil reserves: Venezuela and Iran. Why is it so difficult to leave oil behind? Below are some clues. It’s the economy If financial markets breathe according to fluctuations in the price of a barrel, it is because their agents are deeply linked to assets associated with hydrocarbons. “We cannot make the transition by breaking fossil fuel companies overnight, because that would be an unprecedented planetary economic disaster. Banking giants like HSBC would go bankrupt,” Claudio Angelo, international policy coordinator at the Brazilian Climate Observatory, told AFP. Economic dependence is total in countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq, but not only in them. In the case of Brazil, for example, removing Petrobras from the trade balance would dismantle the economy, since oil is one of the main export products, adds Angelo. Other countries, like Colombia, are so dependent on these revenues that their president, Gustavo Petro, is asking for sovereign debt relief to make his promise not to award new oil exploration contracts viable. Oil extraction pumps, Iran, Middle East Reuters Political will Oil exporting powers such as the United States, Canada and Australia, on the other hand, have the means to take on the energy transition, says Bill Hare, director of the Climate Analytics institute. “It’s a question of political will”, he adds to AFP. But with Trump’s return to power, along with the global advance of the far right, economic interests are once again prioritized to the detriment of the fight against global warming – when the phenomenon is not directly denied. “There is a whole vision in the West, led by the United States, of returning to a model that already existed”, in the short term, maintains Leonardo Stanley, associate researcher at the Center for State and Society Studies in Buenos Aires. The most powerful lobby Present at the annual UN climate conferences, oil companies – from the American ExxonMobil to the Saudi Aramco – defend their interests behind the scenes, sometimes through large consultancies such as McKinsey, as an AFP investigation at COP28 showed. “The oil and gas sector is the most powerful lobby on Earth,” says Angelo. For 30 years he has “played to postpone changes”, he adds. Who pays the bill? To abandon oil, financial support is needed for producing countries dependent on these revenues and also for the poorest, to accompany the transition. “There has to be some willingness on the part of large and medium-sized economic powers to create an international system that facilitates this”, which has not happened so far, says Bill Hare. Positive signs Despite everything, there is progress. Renewable energies represented a record of almost 50% of the world’s electrical capacity in 2025, according to Irena, an intergovernmental entity that promotes the energy transition. China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases and, at the same time, leader in the production of renewable energy, exceptionally expanded its wind and solar capacities last year. In Pakistan, solar energy, which was marginal in 2020, has become one of the main sources of electricity. In several regions of Australia and the United States, the advancement of renewable energy has reduced electricity bills, according to Hare. Production sector warns of loss from oil royalties

Source link