ExxonMobil has announced that it will be cutting low-carbon spending by a third.

Once the US-based company seemed poised to shame other oil majors such as BP and Shell by increasing its spend on clean energy projects, but now it has cut the budgets, as have most of the other majors, to refocus on fossil fuels.

Exxon will reduce allocated spending on low carbon technologies to $20bn over the next five years, whereas it was pencilled in to spend $30bn previously. The company has also recently shelved its plans for a hydrogen plant in Texas.

ExxonMobil is, however, still trumpeting its clean projects, saying it is “leveraging its capabilities to build a portfolio of low-carbon businesses aligned with the company’s core strengths” noting that it established the world’s first large-scale, end-to-end carbon capture and storage system and is also advancing integrated CCS-enabled low-carbon data centre projects.

Of the $20bn earmarked for lower-emission investments between 2025 and 2030, approximately 60 per cent will be focused on reducing emissions for third-party customers.

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