Why Exxon and Chevron are doubling down on fossil fuel energy with big acquisitions
Prices at a Chevron Corp. gas station in Fontana, California, on Thursday, July 8, 2021.
Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images
On Monday, Chevron announced plans to acquire oil and gas company Hess for $53 billion in stock.
Less than two weeks prior, Exxon Mobil announced it is acquiring oil company Pioneer Natural Resources for $59.5 billion in stock.
On Tuesday, the International Energy Agency released its annual world energy outlook report that projects global demand for coal, oil and natural gas will hit an all-time high by 2030, a prediction the IEA’s executive director Fatih Birol had telegraphed in September.
“The transition to clean energy is happening worldwide and it’s unstoppable. It’s not a question of ‘if,’ it’s just a matter of ‘how soon’ — and the sooner the better for all of us,” Birol said in a written statement published alongside his agency’s world outlook. “Taking into account the ongoing strains and volatility in traditional energy markets today, claims that oil and gas represent safe or secure choices for the world’s energy and climate future look weaker than ever.”
But based on their acquisitions, Chevron and Exxon are seemingly preparing for a different world than the IEA is portending.
“The large companies — nongovernment companies — do not see an end to oil demand any time in the near future. That’s one of the messages you have to take from this. They are committed to the industry, to production, to reserves and to spending,” Larry J. Goldstein, a former president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation and a trustee with the not-for-profit Energy Policy Research Foundation, told CNBC in a phone conversation Monday.
“They’re in this in the long haul. They don’t see oil demand declining anytime in the near term. And they see oil demand in fairly large volumes existing for at least the next 20, 25 years,” Goldstein told CNBC. “There’s a major difference between what the big oil companies believe the future of oil is and the governments around the world.”
So, too, says Ben Cahill, a senior fellow in the energy security and climate change program at the bipartisan, nonprofit policy research organization, Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“There are endless debates about when ‘peak demand’ will occur, but at the moment, global oil consumption is near an all-time high. The largest oil and gas producers in the United States see a long pathway for oil demand,” Cahill told CNBC.
Pioneer Natural Resources crude oil storage tanks near Midland, Texas, on Oct. 11, 2023.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Africa, Asia driving demand
Globally, momentum behind and investment in clean energy is increasing. In 2023, there will be $2.8 trillion invested in the global energy markets, according to a prediction from the IEA in May, and $1.7 trillion of that is expected to be in clean technologies, the IEA said.
The remainder, a bit more than $1 trillion, will go into fossil fuels, such as coal, gas and oil, the IEA said.
Continued demand for oil and gas despite growing momentum in clean energy is due to population growth around the globe and in particular, growth of populations “ascending the socioeconomic ladder” in Africa, Asia and to some extent Latin America, according to Shon Hiatt, director of the Business of Energy Transition Initiative at the USC Marshall School of Business.
Oil and gas are relatively cheap and easy to move around, particularly in comparison with building new clean energy infrastructure.
“These companies believe in the long-term viability of the oil and gas industry because hydrocarbons remain the most cost-effective and easily transportable and storable energy source,” Hiatt told CNBC. “Their strategy suggests that in emerging economies marked by population and economic expansion, the adoption of low-carbon energy sources may be prohibitively expensive, while hydrocarbon demand in European and North American markets, although potentially reduced, will remain a significant factor.”
Also, while electric vehicles are growing in popularity, they are just one section of the transportation pie, and many of the other sections of the transportation sector will continue to use fossil fuels, said Marianne Kah, senior research scholar and board member at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. Kah was previously the chief economist of ConocoPhillips for 25 years.
“While there is a lot of media attention given to the increasing penetration of electric passenger vehicles, global oil demand is still expected to grow in the petrochemical, aviation and heavy-duty trucking sectors,” Kah told CNBC.
Geopolitical pressures also play a role.
Exxon and Chevron are expanding their holdings as European oil and gas majors are more likely to be subject to strict emissions regulations. The U.S. is unlikely to have the political will to force the same kind of stringent regulations on oil and gas companies here.
“One might speculate that Exxon and Chevron are anticipating the European oil majors divesting their global reserves over the next decade due to European policy changes,” Hiatt told CNBC.
“They are also betting domestic politics will not allow the U.S. to take significant new climate policies directed specifically to restrain or limit or ban the level of U.S. oil and gas domestic production,” Amy Myers Jaffe, a research professor at New York University and director of the Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab at NYU’s School of Professional Studies, told CNBC.
Goldstein expects the ever-expanding U.S. national debt will eventually put all kinds of government subsidies on the chopping block, which he says will also benefit companies such as Exxon and Chevron.
“All subsidies will be under enormous pressure,” Goldstein said, the intensity of that pressure dependent on which party is in the White House at any given time. “By the way, that means the large financial oil companies will be able to weather that environment better than the smaller companies.”
Also, sanctions of state-controlled oil and gas companies in countries like those in Russia, Venezuela and Iran are providing Exxon and Chevron a geopolitical opening, Jaffe said.
“They likely hope that any geopolitically driven market shortfalls to come can be filled by their own production, even if demand for oil overall is reduced through decarbonization policies around the world,” Jaffe told CNBC. “If you imagine oil like the game of musical chairs, Exxon Mobil and Chevron are betting that other countries will fall out of the game regardless of the number of chairs and that there will be enough chairs left for the American firms to sit down, each time the music stops.”
An oil pumpjack pulls oil from the Permian Basin oil field in Odessa, Texas, on March 14, 2022.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Oil that can be tapped quickly is a priority
Known oil reserves are increasingly valuable as European and American governments look to limit the exploration for new oil and gas reserves, according to Hiatt.
“Notably, both Pioneer and Hess possess attractive, well-established oil and gas reserves that offer the potential for significant expansion and diversification for Exxon and Chevron,” Hiatt told CNBC.
Oil and gas reserves that can be brought to market relatively quickly “are the ideal candidates for production when there is uncertainty about the pace of the energy transition,” Kah told CNBC, which explains Exxon’s acquisition of Pioneer, which gave Exxon more access to “tight oil,” or oil found in shale rock, in the Permian basin.
Shale is a kind of porous rock that can hold natural gas and oil. It’s accessed with hydraulic fracking, which involves shooting water mixed with sand into the ground to release the fossil fuel reserves held therein. Hydrocarbon reserves found in shale can be brought to market between six months and a year, where exploring for new reserves in offshore deep water can take five to seven years to tap, Jaffe told CNBC.
“Chevron and Exxon Mobil are looking to reduce their costs and lower execution risk through increasing the share of short cycle U.S. shale reserves in their portfolio,” Jaffe said. Having reserves that are easier to bring to market gives oil and gas companies increased ability to be responsive to swings in the price of oil and gas. “That flexibility is attractive in today’s volatile price climate,” Jaffe told CNBC.
Chevron’s purchase of Hess also gives Chevron access in Guyana, a country in South America, which Jaffe also says is desirable because it is “a low cost, close to home prolific production region.”
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Donald Trump signed two executive orders today that walked back parts of tariffs he previously imposed on US automakers ahead of a rally in Michigan to mark his first 100 days in office.
The Wall Street Journal first reported today in an exclusive that Trump was “expected to soften the impact of his automotive tariffs, preventing duties on foreign-made cars from stacking on top of other tariffs and easing some levies on car parts.”
Trump signed an executive order making sure the 25% tariffs on vehicles and certain auto parts won’t stack on top of existing aluminum, steel, or Canada and Mexico tariffs. He also gave automakers a credit to help blunt the impact of the 25% duties on imported parts that go into US-built cars.
Trump’s backpedal comes after weeks of meeting with automaker executives, and a week after a coalition that included GM, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Hyundai sent a letter urging him to drop tariffs on foreign auto parts due to land in May.
American Automotive Policy Council (AAPC) president Matt Blunt today said in response to the executive orders, “American Automakers Ford, GM, and Stellantis appreciate the administration’s clarification that tariffs will not be layered on top of the existing Section 232 tariffs on autos and auto parts. Applying multiple tariffs to the same product or part was a significant concern for American automakers, and we are glad to see this addressed. We will review the details of the executive order closely to assess how effectively it will mitigate the impact of tariffs on American automakers, our domestic supply chains and ultimately American consumers.” The AAPC represents Ford, GM, and Stellantis.
Electrek’s Take
The 25% auto tariffs implemented under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act aren’t going anywhere, and most economists say that tariffs will raise car prices and slow auto sales. This White House Fact Sheet is titled, “President Donald J. Trump Incentivizes Domestic Automobile Production.” Where’s the incentive? US automakers are just getting hit with the stick once instead of twice, and they’re thanking Trump for it.
The carrot that worked as an incentive was Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, along with the stability that came with it. All this whiplash is terrible for the US and global economy.
Read more: Killing IRA EV tax credits will ruin US EV and battery industries – Princeton study
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New data suggests that the Tesla Powerwall 3 is significantly disrupting the US solar inverter market.
The home battery pack’s integrated inverter is changing the game.
Tesla acquired its solar business when it bought SolarCity in a controversial deal due to Musk being a large shareholder of both Tesla and SolarCity, and Musk’s cousin led the latter.
The automaker kept the SolarCity operations going for a few years. In fact, it continued until after Tesla shareholders sued Musk over the acquisition, and Musk defended himself by claiming that SolarCity had become an integral part of Tesla.
Shortly after he won the lawsuit, Tesla virtually stopped all operations that came from its SolarCity acquisition, which primarily consisted of residential solar financing and installations.
Tesla even stopped reporting solar deployment. The company’s energy business now consists almost entirely of Powerwall and Megapack deployments.
However, the launch of the Powerwall 3 has indirectly brought Tesla back into the solar business, as the home battery pack features an inverter that works for both solar and storage applications.
EnergySage is a company that matches solar installers with potential buyers, and as a result, it has a wealth of interesting data about the solar industry in the US. Today, it released its Spring 2025 Marketplace report.
In the report, EnergySage revealed that Tesla became the second-most quoted inverter brand in the second half of last year:
Tesla became the most quoted battery brand in H2 2024, occupying 63% of Marketplace share nationwide. Because the Powerwall 3 includes an integrated inverter, Tesla also became the second-most quoted inverter brand. With batteries increasingly being added to solar systems—the national battery attachment rate jumped to 45% in H2 2024, an all-time high—Tesla’s growth was a key driver of the low storage and solar prices seen on EnergySage. In 2025, we are examining whether brand backlash and equipment shortages will affect Tesla’s Marketplace share.
This is also a byproduct of the increased popularity of energy storage systems when deploying new solar systems.
In big solar markets like California and Texas, the majority of residential solar quotes are attached to batteries, and Tesla is not the top quoted brand, thanks to Powerwall 3:
Powerwall was already the preferred home battery pack for many homeowners, and the fact that it now includes a solar inverter has made it even more attractive, as most home energy storage systems in the US are being deployed along with rooftop solar.
The Powerwall 3’s solar inverter integration is pushing solar plus storage costs down quite a bit.
The popularity of the Powerwall 3 has particularly hurt Enphase, a leader in solar inverter. It had 73% of the US market in 2022, and now it is down to 53%.
Despite Tesla driving prices down, Powerwall 3 is not the cheapest battery pack available. Panasonic and EG4 batteries were both priced lower on a per kWh basis than Tesla’s in the second half of 2024, but Tesla won on cost when also replacing the solar inverter.
However, it’s not all good news from Tesla. EnergySage also recently reported an increase in customers requesting alternatives to Powerwalls in 2025, partly due to Elon Musk’s increasing controversy.
If you’re interested in installing solar panels and/or batteries for your home, we recommend using EnergySage. You will be able to get quotes without any hassle and only talk to someone when you are ready to move forward. Within minutes, you can get on the path to producing your own power with solar and battery storage, including with Powerwall.
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Here’s something most people don’t know: In the US, switching to solar and battery-based energy can actually save you money on taxes. And it’s not a future promise – it’s happening right now. Under the US Residential Clean Energy Credit, BLUETTI’s eligible solar systems and home batteries qualify for a 30% federal tax credit through 2032. That means with the right model, like the AC500 Home Battery Backup, you’re not only saving on electricity, you could also get a portion of your purchase back during tax season.
Meanwhile, gas generators are quietly costing more
There’s a reason so many people have relied on gas generators: they’re familiar, accessible, and have served us well for years. But as fuel prices continue to rise and usage becomes more frequent, the hidden costs of gas generators are quietly piling up:
- Ongoing fuel expenses, especially during summer or storm seasons
- Routine maintenance and part replacements
- Stricter regulations in certain areas limiting usage times
- Noise complaints and environmental concerns
It’s not about shaming these tools—it’s about recognizing when the cost-to-benefit ratio starts to shift.
Not ready to give up your generator? Start small with the BLUETTI AC60
The move to clean energy doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Sometimes, the right first step is simply trying a lightweight alternative, like the AC60 Portable Power Station (Pioneer 50).
- Compact and powerful: 600W output (1000W surge) covers most outdoor needs
- Historically affordable: Only $269 after subsidy
- Fast charging: 80% charge within an hour
- IP65-rated for water and dust resistance – ideal for outdoor life
- Backed by a 6-year warranty, cutting down on waste and replacement costs
- Expandable to 2,015Wh capacity for powering phones, laptops, and more
Whether you’re into camping, road trips, or just want something for light backup at home, portable power stations like AC60 are an easy way to test the waters – no big commitment needed.
Need something stronger? Apex 300 is built to last
For those looking to level up their home battery backup or long-term savings, the Apex 300 offers a durable, future-forward alternative. With second-gen EV-grade batteries rated for 6,000+ cycles, this power station can last up to 17 years – nearly twice as long as typical models.
More reasons why Apex 300 stands out:
- Ultra-efficient 20W AC idle drain extends fridge runtime by up to 24 hours and boosts CPAP usage by 2.5x compared to typical units
- Built-in 120V/240V dual output with 12,000W bypass that powers 99% of home appliances, even a Tesla EV
- 2-year savings sprint when paired with one Solar X 4K Charge Controller for a massive 6400W solar input
- Whisper-quiet at 40dB, no fumes, no fuel
- Time-of-use savings made easy: Easily schedule and monitor energy usage with a user-friendly app and a clear, intuitive LED screen
- Expandable ecosystem: Add extra B300K batteries or a smart 700W Hub D1 to grow your setup as your needs evolve, from whole-home backup to off-grid RV power
This isn’t about replacing your gas generator overnight. It’s about introducing a better Plan B that’s cleaner, quieter, and built for the long haul.
Thinking about a cleaner future? BLUETTI is offering a little help
In honor of Earth Day, BLUETTI has launched a new Clean Energy Incentive Program. Gas generator owners around the world can submit basic info about their devices and select a clean power product to receive an exclusive subsidy.
The compact AC60 and other select models are already available at subsidized prices through BLUETTI’s Clean Energy Incentive Program – a practical step designed to support a smoother, more affordable transition to greener living.
Meanwhile, early access to the all-new Apex 300 Portable Power Station is now open through May 19, ahead of its official launch on May 20 on Indiegogo.
Going green isn’t about rushing
It’s about small, thoughtful choices that build toward something better – for your home, your wallet, and the planet. BLUETTI believes real change happens step by step, just like the LAFF (Light An African Family) Initiative. By walking the same path as those in need, the team can better understand and manage which solutions will most effectively help families who need affordable, sustainable energy.
So even if your gas generator still works just fine, it might be worth looking at a smarter backup. The future doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing. It can start with one quiet step with BLUETTI’s solutions, and this simple step could lead to a brighter, more sustainable future for everyone.
About BLUETTI
BLUETTI is a dedicated advocate for sustainability, integrating ESG principles throughout product design and corporate initiatives. Through impactful projects like LAAF (Light An African Family), BLUETTI provides affordable, sustainable energy solutions to communities across Africa. By partnering with Leave No Trace, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, BLUETTI supports responsible outdoor recreation through clean energy solutions that minimize environmental footprints. This blend of craftsmanship, reliability, and a focus on real-world needs is what makes BLUETTI trusted in over 110 countries and regions.
Follow BLUETTI on Twitter/X here and on Facebook here.
All photos: BLUETTI
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