Oil and gas companies are generally considered impediments to the energy transition. ExxonMobil is emblematic of the American oil industry’s most assured (to its critics, most egregious) approach: rather than diversifying into renewables and associated clean technologies, ExxonMobil aims to stay with fossil fuels rather than shifting to electrons. This lecture on US energy politics considers how the company seeks to steer this course not only by rising to the challenge of a global energy transition but also by negotiating the vagaries of whiplash shifts in US energy policy, from the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act seeking to boost America’s green energy transition to the second Trump administration’s aspiration to “unleash” American energy and discourage renewable sources. Will ExxonMobil’s tactics succeed? Either way it will serve as a bellwether for the industry’s future as well as for policymakers needing a wide range of tools to deliver a Net Zero global economy.

Dr. Stefan Andreassen is a Reader in Comparative Politics at Queen's University Belfast. He works in the areas of comparative politics and international relations with a primary interest in the political economy of development. Recently this research focuses on energy and natural resources, including how international oil and gas companies have shaped twentieth-century international relations and how they have been pivotal actors in the current energy transition. He is the author of Africa’s Development Impasse: Rethinking the Political Economy of Transformation and his current project centers on Post-Colonial Politics, Petrocultures and The Energy Transition. Andreassen holds a PhD in Political Science from Arizona State University.