Europe’s biggest oil company responded to the worst oil-price crash in a generation with its $54 billion takeover of BG Group Ltd., betting that demand for natural gas will rise as the world shifts to cleaner-burning fuels.
Now Chief Executive Officer Van Beurden says the next thing he’ll buy is a car that doesn’t depend on either oil or gas to run. Van Beurden will switch from a diesel car to a plug-in Mercedes-Benz S500e in September, a company spokesman said. Chief Financial Officer Jessica Uhl already drives a BMW i3 electric car.
“The whole move to electrify the economy, electrify mobility in places like northwest Europe, in the U.S., even in China, is a good thing,” Van Beurden said in an interview on Bloomberg TV Tuesday.
“We need to be at a much higher degree of electric vehicle penetration — or hydrogen vehicles or gas vehicles — if we want to stay within the 2-degrees Celsius outcome.”
The U.K. said Monday it will ban sales of diesel- and gasoline-fueled cars by 2040, two weeks after France announced a similar plan to reduce air pollution and meet targets to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). Carmaker Volvo AB said this month it will manufacture only electric or hybrid vehicles from 2019 onwards.
Shell reported results Tuesday that beat expectations after cutting costs to adapt to a world of $50-a-barrel oil. The company has adopted “what we call a lower-forever mindset,” Van Beurden said on an earnings conference call.
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