Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub insists $1.2 billion carbon capture investment is not greenwashing

“A lot of models are showing that even by 2040, if you tried to do your best in terms of building renewables and other alternatives, the demand for oil would still be around 60 to 70 million barrels. We’re at 100 million today. Unfortunately, if you don’t invest in the oil industry, by then the supply would be 27. So when we talk about a just transition, we have to remember that there are places around the world that have tremendous oil and gas resources. But if they can’t develop those, they’re the ones that will get left behind, and they’re the ones that will suffer.”

Yet Hollub also believes the world faces a serious climate crisis. And her response has been to make major investments in carbon capture technology, which she believes play to her company’s engineering strengths and can make a major contribution to solving the problem. To critics who say it’s just an effort to “greenwash” the company’s oil business, she responds:

“We would not be sending $1.2 billion for a greenwashing campaign. I can assure you of that…The way we look at it is this is not something that we have the choice to do or not. It’s something that we feel like we should do and need to do to help the world.”

I asked her what advice she would give to other U.S. companies trying to navigate the polarized U.S. political environment.

“It’s the most challenging that I’ve ever seen in my career. But I would say take the best moments you can get. I love President Biden’s commitment to try to reduce emissions and try to get us in a better place with respect to climate. And the IRA bill, that was amazing. It’s going to be very helpful in advancing our technologies. So we are trying to work with the Democrats on that…And then we work with the Republicans on other things around making sure that we don’t shut down the oil industry in the United States, because we don’t want to do what Europe did.”

Other news below.

Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com

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AROUND THE WATERCOOLER

In 2020 Sam Bankman-Fried tweeted about a VC ‘horror story.’ Now that investor reveals what he saw at Alameda Research—and why he walked, by Luisa Beltran

FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried says he has just $100,000 in his bank account after running a company that was once worth $32 billion, by Alena Botros

‘The so-called golden era is over’: The U.K.’s prime minister sounds the alarm over China and says the country ‘poses a systemic challenge to our values and interests’, by Prarthana Prakash

An ex-mayor who was elected at 23 years old just lost his appeal on charges that he defrauded investors and he asked for bribes from marijuana businesses, by Associated Press

Now is the best time to get your dream job if you don’t have a college degree, by Jane Thier

This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.