In 2025, the share of spending on low-carbon technologies among oil and gas giants fell to a five-year low. While in 2024, production companies allocated 10% of their capital expenditures to green projects, last year that figure dropped to just 6.5%.
This is evidenced by data from BloombergNEF, as reported by Bloomberg.
In financial terms, spending on clean technologies in this sector fell from $38 billion to $25.7 billion over the year, a drop of more than 30%.
BloombergNEF analysts noted that spending on low-carbon projects declined even as overall capital expenditures increased.
However, there are exceptions to the overall trend. For example, Repsol SA and Saudi Aramco became the largest investors in projects related to the energy transition. Each of these companies invested about $4 billion in such technologies during 2025, thus exceeding the previous year’s spending.
Investor pressure and the US factor
The largest reduction in green expenditures was recorded by analysts in the United States. BloombergNEF directly links this to the change in the energy policy of the new administration, as under President Donald Trump, investments in clean energy were reduced.
“Since the beginning of 2025, policy volatility under the Trump administration, including permitting delays and executive orders to halt operations, has significantly increased the risk for the execution of capital-intensive offshore wind projects,” the analysts write in their report.
Overall, oil and gas companies are reducing their environmental budgets to appease investors. At the same time, extraction giants are increasingly focusing directly on fossil fuel operations. Analysts forecast that this trend will persist in the coming years, so investments in eco-modernization will continue to decline.
Only 32 major oil giants are responsible for half of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions. As previously reported by EcoPolitic, the largest companies are state-owned, and these particular countries are blocking a global phase-out of fossil fuels.
