Two things to bear in mind when someone tells you they suffer from a problem of perception. First, perception shapes and sometimes outright supplants reality. Second, the complaint comes with a subtext of “it’s not me, it’s you.”
Which brings us to Big Oil.
Speaking at an industry conference in London last week, Amin Nasser, chief executive of Saudi Arabian Oil Co. – AKA Saudi Aramco – said the industry suffers from “a crisis” of perception. People mistakenly think the oil business is finished, he argued, so they won’t invest in it, and that’s going to lead to a crisis of supply, which hurts everyone. He said a “senior financial figure” he ran into at Davos predicted the end of the oil industry in about five years, while another claimed most vehicles on the road would be electric within a decade.