Oil companies are getting hammered by investors for being oil companies. The price of a barrel of crude is down 60 percent in the last two years. The New York Stock Exchange index for oil and gas stocks has fallen about 25 percent over the same period. Exxon Mobil has been downgraded by Standard and Poor’s for the first time since the 1930s. Royal Dutch Shell reported Wednesday its earnings fell 58 percent in the first three months of 2016 from the same period a year earlier. The Paris climate treaty aims to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius by cutting fossil fuel emissions. Even Saudi Arabia is trying to get out of the oil business . How can oil companies react to that sort of decline? They could quit spending billions of dollars to find oil that may eventually be worth nothing, according to Carbon Tracker, an […]