Spain’s biggest oil company is attempting to move to a lower-carbon future. Photograph: iStockRepsol will sell a 25 per cent stake in its exploration and production business to US investment group EIG for $4.8 billion as Spain’s biggest oil company seeks to raise funds for renewables investments to pivot to a lower-carbon future.
Repsol said the deal, which values its upstream business at about $19 billion, just under the company’s total market capitalisation of $19.4 billion, would “crystallise value” in the division while freeing up capital to scale up renewables investments. Repsol in 2019 was among the first oil and gas companies to set a net zero emissions target and has since begun building wind, solar and hydro plants in Spain, the US and Chile. EIG is one of the private equity industry’s biggest oil and gas investors. In 2014 it founded Harbour Energy, which is now the largest oil and gas producer in the UK’s North Sea.
Some investors and oil industry veterans have called on the biggest companies to spin off their oil and gas divisions, which face a higher cost of capital than pure renewables businesses. So far, most competitors, including Shell and BP, have argued that they will be better able to succeed as integrated companies.
Windmills and solar panels are expensive, environmentally damaging and inefficient. 'Green energy' is a scam by the Elite to impoverish and enslave the West and plunge us into a new Dark Age of tyranny and oppression. They've made us ignorant, now they want us poor.