Why Exxon, Chevron are doubling down on fossil fuel energy

On Monday, Chevron announced plans to acquire oil and gas company Hess for $53 billion in stock.

Less than two weeks prior, Exxon Mobil announced it is acquiring oil company Pioneer Natural Resources for $59.5 billion in stock.

On Tuesday, the International Energy Agency released its annual world energy outlook report that projects global demand for coal, oil and natural gas will hit an all-time high by 2030, a prediction the IEA’s executive director Fatih Birol had telegraphed in September.

“The transition to clean energy is happening worldwide and it’s unstoppable. It’s not a question of ‘if,’ it’s just a matter of ‘how soon’ — and the sooner the better for all of us,” Birol said in a written statement published alongside his agency’s world outlook. “Taking into account the ongoing strains and volatility in traditional energy markets today, claims that oil and gas represent safe or secure choices for the world’s energy and climate future look weaker than ever.”

But based on their acquisitions, Chevron and Exxon are seemingly preparing for a different world than the IEA is portending.

“The large companies — nongovernment companies — do not see an end to oil demand any time in the near future. That’s one of the messages you have to take from this. They are committed to the industry, to production, to reserves and to spending,” Larry J. Goldstein, a former president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation and a trustee with the not-for-profit Energy Policy Research Foundation, told CNBC in a phone conversation Monday.

“They’re in this in the long haul. They don’t see oil demand declining anytime in the near term. And they see oil demand in fairly large volumes existing for at least the next 20, 25 years,” Goldstein told CNBC. “There’s a major difference between what the big oil companies believe the future of oil is and the governments around the world.”

So, too, says Ben Cahill, a senior fellow in the energy security and climate change program at the bipartisan, nonprofit policy research organization, Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“There are endless debates about when ‘peak demand’ will occur, but at the moment, global oil consumption is near an all-time high. The largest oil and gas producers in the United States see a long pathway for oil demand,” Cahill told CNBC.