去年3月，皇家荷蘭殼牌石油公司表示，公司將出售其在加拿大的大部分油砂權益。這個龐大的項目已經從地下開采了數百萬桶粘稠的碳氫化合物，而且與鉆井相比，整個生產過程更像是在采礦。這家油氣巨頭宣布，公司將以72.5億美元的價格出售其油砂資產，并藉此將更多的精力放在其“具有全球化規模和競爭優勢”的業務上。

聲明中并沒有談及資產剝離的更深層次原因。在荷蘭海牙殼牌總部進行了數月的關門磋商之后，這家全球最大的非國有石油公司的高管們認為，能源行業正在發生根本性的轉變，受此影響，有利可圖的油砂可能會變成公司的債務負累。

殼牌內部分析師團隊（又稱“scenarios”）所開展的內部調查認為，原油的全球需求可能會在短短10年內達到最高峰，這對于增量計劃長達四分之一世紀的行業來說就基本上就是“明天”。同時，化石燃料替代能源，例如太陽能、風能和電動汽車，如今變得越來越有競爭力，而且其價格的下降速度也超過了殼牌高管的預期，這些都將加速這一峰值的到來。殼牌認為，當原油需求見頂時，原油價格可能會開始緩慢下滑。最終，過低的價格將難以支付油砂的生產成本。

上述價格下滑并非是另一個油價周期的到來。在這一眾所周知的周期中，油價會像過山車一樣，有落必有起。屆時，原油世紀本身將進入長達數十年的下滑通道。在這個未知的世界中，用殼牌公司廣為流傳的一個詞來說，原油價格可能會陷入“跌跌不休”的境地。

如果這一局面成為現實，然而公司還握著油砂不放，殼牌scenarios團隊負責人杰瑞米·本特漢姆借用了他向其老板寫的備忘錄要點（寫于公司決定出售油砂不久之前），用抑揚頓挫的英國口音對我說，“那么你就——天哪，原諒我——完蛋了。”

殼牌這臺印鈔機在2017年前9個月狂攬90億美元的利潤，在70多個國家聘用了9萬名雇員。如果將這家公司看作是一個國家，那么它的碳印跡將在全球排名第七位，僅次于德國。殼牌在去年的《財富》全球500強企業排名中名列第七，銷售額2400億美元。如今，這家公司為了生存正在收縮自己的業務。它認為，原油需求有可能會在21世紀20年代末至40年代末期間見頂，因為能源行業正在發生顛覆性的轉變：從原油向電力的轉變。

在價格實惠的新型油氣替代能源（也就是眾所周知的太陽能、風能和電池）助推這一轉變向前邁進的同時，政府愈發嚴格的溫室氣體限排政策更是加劇了這一轉變的速度。雖然在特朗普總統主導下美國撤出了巴黎氣候協定，但歐洲、中國以及很多發展中國家正采取舉措減少碳排放量。

如果殼牌未能拿出舉措來應對這一新能源格局，那么公司將背負巨額難以處置的地下油氣資源。為了勘探這些資源，股東花費了數十億美元，然而由于需求的疲軟，公司會發現這些資源開采和銷售并不賺錢。

殼牌首席執行官范伯登發誓不會讓此類情況發生。“我們不會坐以待斃”，這位59歲的荷蘭人在海牙的角落辦公室接受采訪時對我說。“我們會采取措施加以應對。”

問題在于，原油巨頭們對于今后該何去何從感到越發迷茫。在過去，“公司不得不對一系列結果進行權衡，但我們依然可以采取保守的策略來應對”，范伯登說道。他還指出，“目前的挑戰在于，我們無法看清未來會如何發展。”

為此，殼牌做出了一些戰略豪賭。如果奏效的話，他將讓殼牌獲得新生，并適應原油不再是全球經濟首要潤滑劑的時代。他將把這家原油巨頭轉型為一家能源巨頭。

他所要做的第一步就是削減運營成本，以便殼牌能夠比競爭對手更好地利用原油世紀結束之前的這段時光來賺錢。殼牌預計全球天然氣需求在未來幾十年將繼續攀升。但是范伯登一直在削減其石油項目資產組合，只保留那些能夠在原油均價低于40美元/桶的市場中提供良好回報的精益資產。這一價格遠低于過去10年的均價。

殼牌出售了價值數十億美元的項目，包括它認為無法滿足其新低成本要求的油砂。公司正在重新設計其深水原油平臺和在岸頁巖氣項目，以便對其進行精簡。這對于公司來說是一個重大的文化變化，因為公司長期以來一直以工程技術而不是經濟紀律而著稱。此外，在過去兩年中，公司裁掉了12%的員工，也就是1.25萬名雇員，其中很多在加入殼牌時都認為自己找到了一個鐵飯碗，但裁員并沒有結束。

范伯登的第二個策略更難實施。他希望殼牌在自己的推動下能夠成為電力時代的主要力量，也就是這一領域首家真正的國際性大公司。殼牌此前曾在可再生能源發展初期進行過嘗試，但并未獲得成功。范伯登將推動殼牌向更深層次領域發展，并藉此推動公司向銷售電力這個更宏大的目標邁進。殼牌正于北海修建一座在岸風力發電廠；其所參與的財團正在阿曼和加州修建太陽能發電廠；而且公司已經購買了歐洲最大的一家電動汽車充電公司以及一家主要的英國電力提供商。

Last March, Royal Dutch Shell said it was selling most of its stake in Canada’s oil sands, a vast project that has extracted millions of barrels of sticky, gooey hydrocarbons from the ground in a process that resembles mining more than drilling. The oil and gas giant announced that it was unloading its oil-sands assets, for $7.25 billion, so that it could double down on businesses “where we have global scale and a competitive advantage.”

Left unsaid was a deeper reason for the divestiture. Months of deliberations behind closed doors at Shell headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands, had led the top brass at the world’s largest non-state-owned oil company by sales to conclude that the energy industry was changing fundamentally—in a way that could turn the profitable oil-sands operation into a liability.

Internal studies by a group of analysts within Shell known as the “scenarios” team had concluded that global demand for oil might peak in as little as a decade—essentially tomorrow in an industry that plans in quarter-century increments. Hastening the peak was an onslaught of increasingly competitive fossil-fuel alternatives, from solar and wind power to electric cars, whose prices were dropping far faster than Shell executives had expected. When the oil-demand peak came, Shell believed, petroleum prices might begin a slow slide, dipping too low to cover the costs of oil-sands production.

This wouldn’t be just another oil-price cycle, a familiar roller coaster in which every down is followed by an up. It would be the start of a decades-long decline of the Oil Age itself—an uncharted world in which, in a phrase gaining currency at Shell, oil prices might be “lower forever.”

If that scenario materialized, and you were stuck holding the oil sands, Jeremy Bentham, the head of Shell’s scenarios team, tells me, reprising in his British lilt the gist of a memo he wrote to his boss not long before the company decided on the sale, “you were—gosh, forgive me—fucked.”

Shell—a cash machine that racked up $9 billion in profit in the first nine months of 2017; a colossus that employs 90,000 people in more than 70 countries; a corporation that, were it a nation, would have the world’s seventh-largest carbon footprint, behind Germany; and the No. 7 company on Fortune’s Global 500 list last year, with $240 billion in sales—is in an existential squeeze. It has concluded that oil demand is likely to peak sometime between the late 2020s and the late 2040s because of an epic shift underway in the energy industry: a transition from petroleum to electricity.

Fueling this shift are newly affordable alternatives to oil and gas—notably solar power, wind power, and batteries. Adding to it are ever tougher government constraints on greenhouse-gas emissions: Europe, China, and much of the rest of the developing world are moving to curb carbon even as President Trump pulls the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord.

If Shell failed to prepare for this new energy landscape, it could wind up saddled with massive stranded assets: buried oil and gas that its shareholders paid billions to find, but that, because of softening demand, the company found itself unable to profitably drill and sell.

Ben van Beurden, Shell’s CEO, vows that won’t happen. “We won’t be sitting ducks,” the 59-year-old Dutchman tells me in an interview in his corner office at The Hague. “We are going to adapt.”

The problem is that the right path forward for the oil majors is less clear than ever before. In the past, “there was a funnel of outcomes that we had to navigate in, where a conservative approach could still work,” says van Beurden. “What is a challenge at the moment,” he says, “is that we don’t know anymore where the future will go.”

So the oilman is making some big strategic bets. If they work, he’ll remake Shell for an era in which petroleum no longer is the chief lubricant of the global economy. He’ll transform Big Oil into Big Energy.

His first move is to slash the costs of his operation in an attempt to position Shell better than its competitors to profitably ride Oil Age’s tail. Shell expects global demand for natural gas to keep rising for several decades. But van Beurden has been slimming down his portfolio of oil projects with the intent of keeping only those lean enough to make good returns in a world in which oil prices average no more than $40 a barrel, well below the average price over the past decade.

Shell has been selling off billions of dollars worth of projects, including the oil sands, that it believes can’t meet its new low-cost bar. It is redesigning its deepwater oil platforms and onshore shale-gas projects to simplify them, a major cultural change at a firm that has long prided itself more for engineering prowess than for economic discipline. And, over the past two years, the company has laid off about 12% of its workforce, or 12,500 employees, many of whom joined Shell figuring they’d have a job for life. That cutting isn’t over yet.

Van Beurden’s second gambit is harder. He is pushing to position Shell as a major force—the first truly global player, he hopes—in the Age of Power. He is moving Shell, which tried and failed in earlier renewable-energy forays, into a deeper round of them, part of a broader push into selling electricity. Shell is building an offshore wind farm in the North Sea; it’s part of consortia installing solar farms in Oman and California; and it has bought one of Europe’s biggest electric-car-charging firms and a major British electricity provider.

到目前為止，上述這些舉措對于殼牌這家原油巨頭來說算不上是大動干戈。殼牌表示，公司計劃在2020年前，將其在自己所謂的“新能源”領域的開支提升至10-20億美元之間。如果兌現的話，這一數字將占到殼牌2017年公司250億美元總資本支出估值的4%-8%。范伯登信誓旦旦地說，公司今后在可再生能源領域的投資將大幅提升，并朝著他所設定的終極目標邁進，即從全球網絡大量吸收更多的可再生能源，殼牌將用其來生產、交易和銷售能源。

殼牌在11月份稱，公司希望在2035年之前將其能源作業以及在售能源產品的碳密度削減20%，在2050年前削減“一半”左右。對殼牌氣候風險心存顧慮的投資者已在敦促殼牌采取更多的行動對風險敞口進行量化并對其進行規避。不過，殼牌表示其舉措已經在醞釀之中。作為范伯登保護殼牌能力的舉措之一，殼牌此舉是為了讓公司在原油世紀后期能夠像過去一個世紀一樣，塑造和利用能源市場，并在每一個階段實現公司利潤的最大化。不同之處在于，殼牌在未來需要更多地靠清潔的電子來搭建其業務網絡，而不是靠臟乎乎的原油分子。

范伯登說：“問題在于，在電力即將成為主流能源的時代，我們如何打造一個全新的工業體系。我們不會做這一領域的試探者，而是有決心成為這一領域的勝者。”

殼牌的決心凸顯了原油行業當前所面臨的空前壓力。Wood Mackenzie首席分析師西蒙·弗勞爾斯指出，“能源市場正在以超乎人們想象的速度迅速發生變化，其原因在于競爭能源的價格正在下降。” 西蒙·弗勞爾斯預測，天然氣和柴油需求最早可能會在10年之后見頂，到2030年必然見頂。“如果公司最終不得不用新的產品來取代油氣這一核心產品，這將是一個浩大的工程，而且需要很長的時間。因此，公司必須在有這個能力的時候便找準定位，開始做這件事情，而且不能在眼下損失過多的股東價值。”

其他石油巨頭也在嘗試進行這一轉變，但進展的并不順利。法國石油公司道達爾在2011年耗資13.7億美元，購買了加州太陽能面板制造商SunPower 60%的股份，然后又在2016年斥資11億美元，購買了法國電池制造商Saft。SunPower目前的股價較道達爾的收購價下降了一半還多，主要歸咎于太陽能領域競爭的日趨激烈，而且日漸壯大的電池行業也變得更具威脅性。挪威國家石油公司正利用其在建造近海鉆井平臺的專長，投資建設離岸風力發電廠，同時投資開展二氧化碳捕捉和儲存的研發。

替代能源的異軍突起將顛覆現有全球經濟體系中已然建立的諸多行業。隨著一大批客戶在屋頂安裝太陽能面板，并減少對電網電力的采購，主要的發電商被迫進行重組，以減少虧損。同時，前不久還將電動車視為白日夢的諸多領先汽車制造商如今也都爭先恐后地提升了電動車型的產量。

這些公司并沒有看到這場即將到來的革命，至少察覺的還不夠及時。Scenarios負責人本特漢姆的工作就是確保殼牌不會犯同樣的錯誤。

這位59歲的牛津畢業高材生在殼牌被人們稱為本特漢姆教授。這是一個很貼切的名字，因為本特漢姆看起來比高管們更紳士。當我在下午走進他的辦公室時，他坐在橢圓桌旁邊，穿著寬大的灰白色西服和跑鞋，正在用平板電腦做筆記。

在他鋪著紅地毯的辦公室里，一面墻堆著數百本書，另一面則堆滿了紙和工藝品。一塊鑲有邊框的畫板上畫著一只渡渡鳥，這種鳥由荷蘭水手于17世紀在毛里求斯發現。但隨著渡渡鳥的生存環境遭到破壞，這種鳥最終滅絕了。畫板上警告說，渡渡鳥“曾經是一種強大的鳥類”，因環境變化而遭受打擊，而且“未能做出任何應對”。這塊畫板由殼牌每一任scenarios負責人傳給下一任，至今已經傳承了40年。“渡渡鳥如今已經滅亡了。”

本特漢姆對我說：“我的任務就是確保殼牌不會重蹈渡渡鳥的覆轍。”

本特漢姆表示，5年多以前，他和團隊便開始提醒殼牌高管全球經濟正在經歷的一些變化，他們認為這些變化可能會對石油業務帶來很大的沖擊。例如：電動車的崛起。當原油售價在100美元/桶，天然氣價格高居不下時，電動汽車的銷量開始攀升。但當時正值原油行業的好日子，因此殼牌的一些高管認為這類顧慮屬于杞人憂天。

然后在2012年10月，范伯登從殼牌化學品業務負責人升任下游業務總監，開始負責包括天然氣銷售在內的工作。本特漢姆回憶說，范伯登隨后問了自己和團隊一個問題：“從極端的情況來講，電動汽車時代的到來還有多久？”

2014年1月1日，范伯登開始擔任殼牌首席執行官。在他上任的前9個月，原油價格仍處于90-100美元這個十分愜意的位置。然后在當年秋天，原油價格開始下跌，直到2016年2月才見底，跌至29美元/桶。

但是，隨著原油價格的下跌，奇怪的事情發生了：電動汽車銷量仍在增長。國際能源機構（IEA）的數據顯示，2014-2016年，其銷量從32.3萬臺升至75.3萬臺，增幅超過了一倍多。同樣，IEA的數據顯示，2015-2016年期間，全球風能和太陽能的發電比例從4.5%升至5.2%，這在單一年份中是一個很大的漲幅。替代技術的價格也變得越來越平易近人。

美國國家可再生能源實驗室的數據顯示，2010-2016年期間，美國居民太陽能系統和風力發電廠的電力平均成本下降了60%。彭博新能源財經指出，在同一時期，電動汽車常用的鋰電池的價格下降了73%。

2016年末，本特漢姆和團隊察覺到了能源市場正在發生的結構性變化，這次變化絕不僅僅是另一場短暫的原油市場低迷那么簡單。

本特漢姆認為，簡潔有力的短語有著強大的力量，能夠推動自身跨國公司思維的轉變，他開始在殼牌公司內部用“巨大的不確定性”來描述全球原油行業即將面臨的這個新世紀。當年早些時候，英格蘭銀行前行長莫維·金寫的一本書中曾頻頻提到了這一理念。它還借鑒了20世紀知名經濟學家凱恩斯的思想。

2016年-2017年初，本特漢姆的團隊總結了四種局勢，試圖幫助殼牌從容應對這一巨大的不確定性。公司將它們稱為“四個世界”。

如果用圖表來表示，這些場景構成了一個象限圖。橫軸是全球各類能源需求。豎軸是減少化石燃料的技術滲透，包括太陽能、風能和電動汽車等。

如果全球經濟出現了高能源需求和低科技象限的局面，殼牌的建模顯示，全球原油需求恐怕要到21世紀40年代末才能見頂。在這一格局下，全球能源需求到2040年將大幅高于目前的水平；油、煤和天然氣各自都將占總需求的四分之一，太陽能和風能的份額約為5%。殼牌稱這一格局為“活在當下”。

然而，如果未來全球經濟出現的是低能源需求和高科技的局面，那么全球原油需求可能最早將在21世紀20年代末見頂。到2040年，全球能源需求的增速將大幅下滑；油和氣各自將占需求總量的四分之一，煤約占五分之一，而風能和太陽能約占15%。能源總需求量將有所減少，因為人類屆時的能源利用率要比現在高得多。這一格局對殼牌業務的影響最大。殼牌將之稱為“勇敢新世界”。

殼牌并不知道自己最終面臨的將是哪一種世界。這才是公司感到為難的地方。

考慮到人們對“原油供應量將達到頂峰”的熱議才剛剛過去10年，“全球原油需求在不到一代人的時間中將見頂”這一理念實在是難以接受。但事實在于，石油行業的精明人士不得不承認，讓他們感到更加抓狂的是：他們并不知道“轉折點到底是在10年后還是20年后到來，或者到底是什么能源會取代石油的位置”。

57歲澳大利亞人蓋伊·歐騰是殼牌策略業務執行副總裁，他留著短發，有著嚴重的摩托車情結，其職責是幫助殼牌弄清未來的發展方向。他在分析中指出，能源格局已從“錯綜復雜轉變為晦澀難懂”。

自1971年開始，雖然全球能源這塊蛋糕的大小已經增長了一倍多，但化石燃料相應的份額卻沒有太大的變化，在80%-85之間。歐騰說，“錯綜復雜”的能源格局指的是，格局中的變量是明確的，而且“憑著良好的數學功底和精明的頭腦”便可以得出答案。

但是“晦澀難懂”的能源格局則有所不同，而且更加陰暗。其中，未來能源格局最基本的輪廓是模糊的。歐騰說：“在這個大致的發展方向上存在多條途徑，而且這個方向本身也并不是一成不變的。”

殼牌在選擇自身前進道路的同時也試圖圍繞其數十億美元的豪賭采取保值舉措。或者，就像本特漢姆常說的那樣，同時也是借用學術經濟理論中的另一個短語，殼牌的挑戰在于“最大化地減小其最大的遺憾。”

對于殼牌來說，首先要做的就是大刀闊斧地重塑油氣業務，但這項業務實在是大的令人吃驚，而且改革的理由也難以令人信服，同時頗具風險。

這其中包括德州近海墨西哥灣和巴西近海大西洋的油井，殼牌在海床上鉆探了兩英里的深度，精度達到了英寸級別。這其中包括巨型液化天然氣工廠，其中一個位于澳大利亞近海，殼牌上游業務（勘探生產活動）總監安迪·布朗曾對我說，“它是人類修建的最大的浮動建筑。”這其中還包括北海的一些年代久遠的項目，以及從德州到賓夕法尼亞州像工廠一樣的頁巖資源開采區，對了，還有遍布地球的4.3萬個加油站，比麥當勞或星巴克的零售網絡有過之而無不及。

一些綠色樂觀派將這一化石燃料基礎設施本身看作是“化石”，而可再生能源的發展將讓其變成無用的歷史遺跡。范伯登將這一觀點稱之為“徹底的經濟謬論”，而且大多數能源分析師也同意他的看法。國際能源機構曾指出，如果各國政府采取異常嚴苛的環保政策，全球原油需求可能會在2020年左右見頂。該機構還預測，即便這一天真的到來了，原油在2040年仍將占全球總能源需求的23%，其2016年的占比為32%。換句話來說，即便原油需求見頂，原油世紀的落幕可能要等到數十年之后。然而，如果企業希望從中獲利，那么則需要從現在開始就采取果敢的行動。

殼牌首席執行官說：“目前的挑戰在于，我們無法看清未來會如何發展。”

殼牌的大型能源項目所需的前期投資可能會高達100億美元，我們還應注意到，即便項目的利潤能夠如預期那樣兌現，但其兌現的時間跨度則需要數十年或者更長的時間。最近，殼牌采取了一個古怪而且會產生重大影響的舉措，公司擴大了其使用的會計工具，并藉此決定應投資的具體原油項目。

從傳統上來講，殼牌已經對其“凈當前價值”進行了權衡，也就是某個項目目前能夠帶來的收入。如果未來的格局和當今的格局類似，這倒不失為一個合理的指標。然而，由于殼牌已經意識到未來將發生翻天覆地的變化，而且公司必須按照原油價格“跌跌不休”的可能性對其業務進行調整，殼牌已經開始使用另一種會計方法，稱之為“價值投資比率”。它會評估每個項目所需的最低原油價格，以便殼牌能夠在長期內獲得理想的回報。

“換句話來說，項目在低油價環境中的彈性如何？”殼牌上游總監布朗說道，“這是一種完全不同的理念。”

殼牌的高管位于海牙，但休斯敦是殼牌的核心地域，因為公司的工程業務在這里自由地發展。沿著休斯敦西部的12車道高速公路，眾多的石油和天然氣公司座落于黑色的瀝青路兩旁，當地人把這里稱為“能源走廊”，這里也是殼牌深水業務龐大的廠區所在地。

在D號大樓中辦公的大多是墨西哥灣的團隊。大樓的內墻足以凸顯公司對石油的癡迷程度：海上鉆井的巨幅靚照，從地面一直到屋頂。文件柜上的柜臺上擺滿了鉆井用具：各種各樣的水下閥門和配件。

如今，殼牌正在用鋒利的會計利刃裁剪這一文化。這個位于墨西哥灣名為Vito的潛在原油項目便是第一批接受手術的項目之一。

Vito于2014年初首次設計，當時原油的價格在100美元/桶上下。殼牌工程師給了它一個最大的殼體，結果公司沒有足夠的費用來確保這個平臺能夠快速穩定地從海底抽油。但是到2015年，由于原油價格的崩盤，這座集技術之大成的奇跡曾是過于自信的油氣行業的宣傳典范，如今卻成為了昂貴的歷史遺跡。

So far, these are tiny moves in the context of the Shell behemoth. The company says it plans by 2020 to raise annual spending on what it calls “new energies” to between $1 billion and $2 billion—a sum that, assuming it materialized, would account for between 4% and 8% of the $25 billion that Shell has estimated as its total capital spending in 2017. Van Beurden vows the renewable-energy investment will increase significantly over time as he moves toward his endgame: pumping vastly more renewables through the global network that Shell uses to produce, trade, and sell energy.

Shell said in late November that it aspires to cut the carbon intensity of its energy operations and of the energy products it sells by 20% by 2035 and “around half” by 2050. Investors concerned about corporate climate risk had urged Shell to take more action to quantify and mitigate its exposure, though the company says its move was already in the works. Shell’s move is part of van Beurden’s bid to preserve Shell’s ability to do in the post-oil era what it has done for the past century: mold and exploit energy markets to pick off maximum profit at every stage. The difference is that, in the future, Shell will need to run its network less on dirty molecules and more on clean electrons.

“This is a matter of, How do you actually build a whole new industrial complex where electricity is the main way of doing things?” says van Beurden. “We are not going to play in this space in an experimental way. We’re going to play in this space with conviction to win.”

Shell’s scramble underscores unprecedented pressures across the oil industry. “The energy market is changing more rapidly than we could have imagined, and it’s changing because the costs of competitive fuels are coming down,” says Simon Flowers, chief analyst at Wood Mackenzie, who predicts global demand for gasoline and diesel fuel will peak as early as a decade from now and “certainly” by 2030. “If you’re faced with eventually displacing your core product of oil and gas production with something new, it’s an enormous task, and it will take a long time. You’ve just got to put yourself in a position to do so when you can—and without blowing too much shareholder value now.”

Other major oil companies are attempting this shift and finding it tough. Total, the French oil firm, spent $1.37 billion to buy a 60% stake in SunPower, a major California-based solar-panel maker, in 2011, and another $1.1 billion to buy Saft, a French battery maker, in 2016. SunPower’s stock price has fallen by more than half from the deal price, largely because of intensifying competition in the solar sector, and the battery business too is growing more cutthroat. Norway’s Statoil is investing in offshore wind farms, leveraging its expertise building offshore oil rigs, and investing in research into capturing and storing carbon dioxide.

The surge in energy alternatives is upending established industries all across the global economy. Major electricity producers have been forced to restructure in a bid to stanch losses as material numbers of customers put solar panels on their roofs and thus buy less power from the grid. And leading automakers that not long ago laughed off electric cars as a pipe dream are now scrambling to boost production of them.

Those firms didn’t see the revolution coming, at least not soon enough. It’s the job of Bentham, the ?scenarios chief, to make sure Shell doesn’t make the same mistake.

The 59-year-old Oxford graduate is known within Shell as Professor Bentham. The moniker suits, because Bentham looks more don than exec. On the afternoon I walk into his office, he is sitting alone at an oval table, dressed in a baggy gray suit and running shoes, jotting notes on an electronic tablet.

One wall of his red-carpeted office is lined with several hundred books. Another is covered with papers and artifacts. One framed plaque contains a drawing of a dodo. Dutch sailors discovered the bird on the island of Mauritius in the 17th century. But as the dodo’s habitat was destroyed, the bird died out. The dodo, “a once powerful bird,” was hit with a change in its environment and “was unable to respond,” warns the plaque, which has been handed down from one Shell scenarios head to another for the past four decades. “The dodo is now EXTINCT.”

“I am tasked,” Bentham tells me, “with making sure that Shell isn’t a dodo.”

More than five years ago, Bentham says, he and his team began to flag to Shell executives changes afoot in the economy that, they believed, might dramatically affect the oil business. Among them: the rise of electric cars. With oil selling for around $100 a barrel and gasoline prices high, sales of cars that plugged in rather than filled up were beginning to climb. But times were flush in the oil industry, and such concerns struck some at Shell as overblown.

Then, in October 2012, van Beurden was promoted from head of Shell’s chemicals business to downstream director, running the part of the business that, among other things, sells gasoline. Bentham recalls that van Beurden soon asked Bentham and his team a question: “Pushed to the extreme, how quickly could electric vehicles come?”

On Jan. 1, 2014, van Beurden became Shell’s CEO. For the first nine months of his tenure, oil prices hovered comfortably between $90 and $100. Then, in the fall, they began to dive. It wasn’t until February 2016 that they bottomed out, at $29 a barrel.

But something strange happened as oil prices fell: Electric-vehicle sales nevertheless kept climbing. Between 2014 and 2016, they more than doubled, from 323,000 to 753,000, according to the International Energy Agency. Similarly, IEA figures show, between 2015 and 2016, the percentage of global electricity produced by wind and solar rose from 4.5% to 5.2%—a major jump in a single year. Alternative technologies were getting more affordable.

Between 2010 and 2016, according to the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the average costs of electricity from a residential solar system and from a wind farm fell about 60% in the U.S. During the same period, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the price of lithium-ion batteries, a type commonly used in electric cars, dropped 73%.

In late 2016, Bentham and his team sensed a structural change was afoot in the energy market—something more profound than just another ephemeral oil downturn.

Bentham, who appreciates the power of a pithy phrase to move his multinational’s mindset, began referring within Shell to a new era for the global oil industry, one of “radical uncertainty.” The phrase had been popularized earlier that year in a book by Mervyn King, a former governor of the Bank of England. It also borrowed from the thinking of famed 20th-century economist John Maynard Keynes.

Between late 2016 and early 2017, Bentham’s team put together four scenarios to try to help make sense of how Shell might navigate the radical uncertainty. The company calls them the “Four Worlds.”

Diagrammed, the scenarios form a quadrant. One axis is global demand for energy of all sorts. The other axis is the penetration of technologies—solar, wind, electric vehicles, and others—that reduce demand for fossil fuels.

If the quadrant with high energy demand and low technology is the world that materializes, Shell’s modeling suggests, global oil demand won’t peak until perhaps the late 2040s. Under this scenario, by 2040 global energy demand will be significantly larger than it is now; oil, coal, and natural gas each will account for about one-quarter of total demand, and solar and wind together will account for roughly 5%. Shell calls this scenario “Live Now.”

But if the quadrant with low energy demand and high technology is the future that comes to pass, global oil demand might peak as early as the mid-2020s. By 2040, global energy demand will have grown far less; oil and gas each will account for about one-quarter of the total, coal for about a fifth, and wind and solar for roughly 15%. And the total energy pie will be smaller, because humanity will have become far more energy-efficient. It’s this scenario that could most rock Shell’s business. Shell’s name for it: “Brave New World.”

Shell doesn’t have a clue which of the Four Worlds will come true. And that is its dilemma.

The acceptance of the notion that global oil demand will peak within a generation is mind-blowing given that, just a decade ago, the chatter in the energy world was about a coming peak in oil supply. But the fact that the brightest minds in the oil business must concede they don’t know whether the inflection point will come in the 2020s or the 2040s—or exactly what might take oil’s place—is even more discombobulating for them.

In the analysis of Guy Outen, 57, an Australian with close-cropped hair and a serious motorcycle habit who, as Shell’s executive vice president for strategy, is paid to help Shell clarify this future, the energy landscape has shifted from “complicated to complex.”

Since 1971, though the size of the global energy pie has more than doubled, the relative size of the fossil-fuel slice has remained fairly constant, at between 80% and 85%. It has, Outen says, been a “complicated” world—one where the variables are clear and the answer “is something that with good maths and a good brain you can solve for.”

But a “complex” world is a different and darker place. In it, the most basic contours of tomorrow’s energy landscape are opaque. “There are multiple future paths to a general direction which itself isn’t even set in stone,” says Outen.

As Shell picks a path forward, it’s trying to hedge its billion-dollar bets. Or, as Bentham likes to say, borrowing another phrase from academic economic theory, Shell’s challenge is to “minimize the maximum regret.”

That starts with whipping into shape Shell’s oil and gas business, an empire that is mind-bogglingly big, hard to wrangle, and risky.

It features wells in the Gulf of Mexico off Texas and in the Atlantic Ocean off Brazil that Shell drills two miles beneath the sea floor with an accuracy of inches. It includes monster liquefied-natural-gas plants — among them one off the coast of Australia that Andy Brown, Shell’s director of “upstream,” or exploration-and-production, activities, describes to me as “the largest thing man has built that floats.” It encompasses aging projects in the North Sea, factory-like shale fields from Texas to Pennsylvania, and, oh, by the way, 43,000 gas stations ringing the planet—a larger retail network than that of either McDonald’s or Starbucksx.

Some green optimists portray this fossil-fuel infrastructure as itself a fossil—a relic that renewables are about to render unnecessary. Van Beurden calls that “fundamental economic nonsense,” and most energy analysts agree with him. The International Energy Agency, which says that global oil demand could peak around 2020 if governments adopted particularly green policies, predicts that even if it happened, oil still would account for 23% of total global energy in 2040, down from 32% in 2016. In other words, even after oil demand peaks, the Oil Age is likely to have a decades-long tail. But riding it profitably requires radical action today.

“What is a challenge at the moment,” says the Shell CEO, “is that we don’t know anymore where the future will go.”

A big Shell energy project can require investing $10 billion on the front end—with the understanding that profits, assuming they materialize as planned, probably won’t come for a decade or more. Recently, in a move that is wonky but has massive repercussions, Shell enlarged the accounting toolbox it uses to decide which oil projects to invest in.

Traditionally, Shell has weighed prospects on their “net present value,” essentially how much money a project will spit out now. That’s a sensible metric under a worldview in which tomorrow will look pretty much like today. But because Shell has come to believe that tomorrow will look fundamentally different—that it must adjust to the possibility that oil prices will be “lower forever”—it has begun using an additional accounting method. Called the “value-investment ratio,” it assesses the minimum oil price a project will need in order to throw off, far into the future, Shell’s desired level of return.

“In other words, how resilient is this project against a low-price world?” says Brown, Shell’s upstream director. “That’s a very different mindset.”

The Hague is where Shell’s top executives sit, but Houston is the soul of Shell, the place where the company’s engineering swagger runs free. Along a stretch of 12-lane highway on the west side of Houston, a strip of blacktop straddled by so many oil and gas firms that it’s known locally as the “energy corridor,” sits the sprawling campus that’s home to Shell’s deepwater operations.

Building D houses most of the Gulf of Mexico teams. The building’s inside walls are covered with what amounts to petroleum porn: floor-to-ceiling glamour shots of offshore rigs. A counter atop a file cabinet is strewn with drillers’ toys: an assortment of underwater valves and fittings.

Now Shell is cutting this culture with a sharp accounting knife. One of the first patients: a prospective Gulf of Mexico oil project called Vito.

Vito was first designed in early 2014, when oil was trading around $100 a barrel. Shell engineers gave it maximal bulk, sparing little expense to ensure it could pull oil out of the seabed fast and hard. But by 2015, with oil prices having cratered, the technological wonder that was Vito appeared a poster child for an overconfident industry—an expensive relic.

那年秋天，隨著原油價格的繼續下跌，成長于迪拜、畢業于哈佛商學院、曾在高盛從事投行業務的威爾·薩萬被任命為深水業務執行副總裁。那時他才41歲。

在設計Vito時，殼牌預計原油的長期價格大約在80美元/桶左右。2016年初，這位新上任的年輕老板對團隊說，Vito項目已經死了，除非他們能夠精簡這一項目，并在油價低于40美元/桶的環境下賺錢。薩萬被認為是殼牌一名冉冉升起的新星，他曾說道，“鑒于當時的油價，我沒法站在執行委員會面前”，要求殼牌高層繼續在Vito里投錢。

在接下來的一年的時間里，Vito團隊對Vito的設計方案進行了大刀闊斧的修改。他們將其“干舷部重量”（平臺的殼體）從4萬噸削減至8900噸。他們取消了原方案中鋪設于海床上面的備用管。即便在主管道堵塞之后（殼牌強調，阻塞只會妨礙生產，對安全沒有影響），備用管也能確保平臺繼續采油。殼牌團隊希望，新Vito的規模能夠適用于原油需求逐漸見頂的大環境。

盡管行業目前面臨著各種各樣的困境，但拯救Vito項目的舉措證明了深水采油業務并未消亡。深水項目要求在初期進行大量的投資，但它也會在其整個周期中產生大量的現金。即便在這個原油需求增速放緩的時代，“我也不會介意持有這類原油資產”，范伯登說道。

殼牌的執行委員會將于今年年初決定，瘦身后的Vito項目是否能夠上馬。

在以求穩著稱的殼牌公司內部，有一個短語可謂是臭名昭著：“炭中取栗”。前殼牌首席執行官曾用這一短語來描述公司在先前一輪可再生能源投資過程中所采取的實驗性策略。殼牌在這些技術開始大熱的時候一頭扎了進去，結果卻成了引火燒身。

殼牌投資制作太陽能面板，但后來卻不得不放棄了這一投資，因為公司事后才發現太陽能面板存在著殘酷競爭，而自己卻難以獲得像樣的利潤。殼牌曾投資建設風力發電廠，后來卻撤出了這個行業，因為公司認為風電項目屬于浪費，而且風力發電的平均利潤率低于深水油井。公司還曾聚焦過氫能源，卻在2005年左右叫停，因為監管方發現殼牌的石油儲量出現了大幅超售的情況。這一丑聞也促使殼牌重新將精力放在自認為最為重要的業務之上。

范伯登告訴我，“我們此前曾嘗試過這些領域，也因此為公司造成了不小的后遺癥。到目前為止，沒有一個項目真正為公司帶來了效益，同時，我還拋棄了一些后來確實有著不俗效益的項目，因為我們當時曾認為這些項目不會有什么好結果。因此在這一方面，我們的可查記錄并不怎么美好。”

范伯登從這個不怎么光彩的歷史中學到了最基本的一個教訓：殼牌此前之所以在新能源領域栽了跟頭，是因為公司沒有把它當作一種戰略來抓。結果，公司在行動上缺乏自信，拖泥帶水，而且在不該投的領域投入了過多的資金，但在該投的領域卻存在著嚴重的投資不足。

范伯登指出，如今，殼牌不能再犯同樣的錯誤，因為代價太高了。他說，“我們認為，如果展望一下本世紀的下半葉，你會發現可再生能源可能會占到能源系統的半壁江山。主要形式應該是太陽能，而風能在各地的細分市場中將占據非常重要的地位。因此，如果公司打算參與這個可能會成為能源系統中最大組成部分的非油氣能源系統，那么該公司就必須擁有在這些價值鏈中一爭高下的能力。”

因此，殼牌這一次將進軍電力行業，包括可再生能源，并設立了將自身打造為全球清潔能源主導力量的宏偉目標。

在外界看來，這一策略仍像是一系列倉促、毫無關聯的步伐。例如，殼牌參與了阿曼和加州大型太陽能發電廠的投資，其目的在于實現原油產能的最大化。其太陽能發電廠位于年事已高的老油田旁邊，而這些油田的油基本上都已采盡，如今需要注入蒸汽才能吧剩余的油壓出地表。在歷史上，制作蒸汽需要燃燒天然氣。如今，殼牌所在的這個財團使用太陽能來代替天然氣。

殼牌更大膽的一個舉措是在天然氣發電廠附近建造太陽能發電廠。公司通過建造混合發電系統，來開啟其新能源套利模式：即利用不同的能源，在不同的時間段通過不同的使用組合來實現利潤的最大化。公司已開始在澳大利亞開展這一業務，并計劃將這一模式推而廣之。

與此同時，殼牌利用其在打造海洋巨型鉆井的經驗來開發海上風力發電廠，而海上風力發電被認為是風電行業的未來熱門領域。殼牌在北海荷蘭海域投資興建了一個巨大的海上風電項目，名為Borssele。如今，殼牌正在出售其在這一項目中的權益，并計劃投資其他處于最為盈利的初期階段的海上風能項目，其關注的地域包括：荷蘭其他地域的近海，歐洲各國的近海，臺灣近海和美國東海岸近海等。在開發風力發電廠之余，殼牌還打算購買和出售他們所生產的電力。此舉也將讓其交易商獲得更多的利潤，并有助于減少殼牌的碳印跡。

殼牌也再次將目光投向了氫能源。公司已加入德國的試驗計劃，在德國境內建造約400個加氫站。在殼牌看來，這一由政府補助的項目將有助于公司從初期便介入這一最終可能發展成為一個巨大市場的新事物。氫氣并不是能源，而是能量的攜帶者。其理念在于，在成本低廉的地區使用風力和太陽能發電，然后使用所得的電力將水分解為氫和氧，將氫氣液化，然后就像當今液化天然氣交易那樣，將氫氣運至能源短缺的市場。在那里，氫氣將被名為燃料電池的設備轉化為電力。殼牌認為，借助其交易商和液貨船，公司所具有的不俗優勢可以讓其向全球需求量最大、出價最高的地區銷售氫氣。

殼牌還進入了電池、電動車行業。10月，公司購買了在歐洲運營著3萬多個電動汽車充電樁的荷蘭公司NewMotion。簽約該公司服務的車主還可以使用其他5萬個充電站。殼牌并未透露自己通過什么樣的形式來投資NewMotion，但是按照殼牌的標準來衡量，這筆交易的額度很顯然不值一提。2016年，相關報備文件顯示，NewMotion營收1350萬美元，虧損410萬美元。

12月，殼牌就購買英國商用電力和天然氣公用設施公司First Utility達成了一筆規模更大的交易。雙方并未透露交易細節。

多家大型養老金和現金管理公司批評殼牌未能充分考慮以下可能發生的情況：當原油需求見頂、碳排放限制大行其道時，殼牌可能會因其難以處置的資產而苦惱不已，也就是公司的這些未利用黑色黃金難以賣出好的價錢。

當我詢問范伯登對這一觀點的看法時，他將之稱為“與事實不相干的論斷”，并表示殼牌將降低其資產組合的碳印跡，以避免出現資產難以處置的情況。同時，他還指出，他已委任其內部分析師計算他的這一策略在失敗后公司可能面臨的風險。他向分析師提出的問題是：“如果這個世界的變化超出了人們的認知，也就是以我們目前無法想象的方式發生了變化，而且我對此感到徹底麻木，也沒有在制定決策時考慮到這一點，那么公司出現風險價值的概率有多大？”。殼牌稱該研究將于4月出爐。

當天下午，就在我離開殼牌總部時，我經過了大廳里擺放的一個長方形的巨大石塊，跟門的大小差不多，石塊里鑲嵌著數十個已經成為化石的雙殼貝軟體動物（扇貝的近親）的脊狀突起外殼。脊狀突起外殼正是殼牌的標志。這是公司的創始人所鐘愛的一件藝術品，其位于倫敦的家族曾在19世紀從事過裝飾貝殼交易，那時，原油世紀還未到來。也正是因為原油世紀這一能源轉型時代的出現，殼牌才迎來了真正的春天。

如果殼牌的高管們能夠安然度過當今能源格局的變化，那么殼牌很可能有能力繼續運營一個世紀之久，只不過其業務已從貝殼變為了石油，然后又變成了……誰知道呢，可能是太陽能、風能或者其他能源。

如果高管們以失敗告終，那么殼牌這個名字可能會讓人們想起一個不同的物種：渡渡鳥。（財富中文網）

本文的一個版本將發表于《財富》2018年2月1日刊，名為《面臨 “跌跌不休”的原油價格，殼牌該如何應對》

譯者：馮豐

審校：夏林

That fall, with oil prices continuing to fall, Wael Sawan, who grew up in Dubai, graduated from Harvard Business School, and did a stint as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, was named Shell’s executive vice president for deepwater. He was all of 41.

Vito had been designed with a rough assumption of a long-term oil price around $80 a barrel. In early 2016, the new young boss told the team Vito was dead unless they could slim it down to be profitable at no more than $40. “I could not stand in front of an executive committee with oil prices where they were” and ask Shell’s leaders to invest in Vito as it was, says Sawan, considered a rising star at Shell.

Over the next year or so, the team radically overhauled the plan for Vito. They slashed its “topside weight”—the platform’s bulk—from 40,000 tons to 8,900 tons. They removed from the plans a backup tube along the sea floor that would ensure the platform could keep pumping oil even if the main tube got clogged. (A clog would hurt only production, not safety, Shell stresses.) The new Vito is right-sized, the Shell team hopes, for a world of peaking oil demand.

The effort to save Vito illustrates why, for all the industry’s difficulties, deepwater oil isn’t dead. A deepwater project requires massive investment at the front end, but it spins off massive cash over its lifetime. Even at a time of slowing oil-demand growth, “that’s an oil position I don’t mind having,” says van Beurden.

Shell’s executive committee is to decide early this year whether to move forward with Vito in its svelte incarnation. “Fingers crossed,” says Sawan.

In a company that loves bromides, there’s one that has become infamous at Shell: “pots on the fire.” The phrase was used by a former Shell CEO to describe the company’s experimental strategy in an earlier round of investments in renewable energy. Shell reached into these technologies when they got hot, and it got burned.

Shell invested in making solar panels, only to abandon that investment after concluding it couldn’t make decent margins in what Shell discovered too late was a cutthroat manufacturing game. It invested in developing wind farms, only to pull back from the sector after deciding wind was a waste because the average wind farm delivered lower margins than the average deepwater oil well. It zoomed into hydrogen, only to put on the brakes in the mid-2000s after regulators found that Shell vastly overbooked oil reserves, a scandal that prompted Shell to refocus on what it saw as the part of its business that really counted.

“We’ve tried these things before,” and “we have still very significant scars as a result of it,” van Beurden tells me. “Nothing so far has really worked, and the things that did work we abandoned because we thought they were not going to work. So we don’t have a fantastic track record.”

Van Beurden takes one basic lesson from this sordid history: Shell failed in renewable energy before because it didn’t regard it as strategic. As a result, it behaved timidly and sloppily. It invested too much in the wrong things. It invested too little in the right things.

Today, van Beurden says, the stakes are too high for Shell to make the same mistake again. “We believe, if you look into the second half of this century, maybe half of the energy system may be renewables,” he says. “The bulk of it is going to be solar, with wind being in very important niche markets here and there. So if you want to play in the non-oil-and-gas part of the energy system—which may be the biggest part of the energy system—you have to have competencies in these value chains.”

So, this time Shell is venturing into electricity, including renewables, with the grand goal of -building the dominant global clean-energy machine.

The strategy still looks from the outside like a series of disjointed, though quickening, steps. For example, Shell is part of consortia building large solar farms in Oman and California. Their purpose: to maximize oil production. The solar fields are being built beside aging oilfields—fields so depleted they now need steam injected into them to push their remaining oil to the surface. Historically, making that steam has required burning natural gas. Now the Shell consortium will produce it with solar power.

A bolder bet is Shell’s effort to build solar farms near gas-fired power plants, constructing hybrid generating systems that allow Shell to do what amounts to new-energy arbitrage: tap different energy sources at different times and in different amounts to maximize profits. It has started doing this in Australia, and it plans to expand the approach.

Meanwhile Shell is leveraging its experience building giant things in the ocean to develop offshore wind farms, widely seen as wind power’s next big thing. It invested in a massive offshore development in the Dutch North Sea called Borssele. Now Shell is selling its stake there and planning to invest in the early, most-profitable stages of other offshore-wind projects. Among the spots it’s eyeing: the waters off other parts of Holland, off other European countries, off Taiwan, and off the U.S. East Coast. Beyond developing the wind farms, Shell intends to buy and sell the power they produce. That will let its traders squeeze out more profit, and it will count toward curbing Shell’s carbon footprint.

Shell also is focusing again on hydrogen. It’s part of a German experiment to install some 400 hydrogen-fueling stations across the country, a government-subsidized effort Shell sees as helping seed what ultimately could be a huge market for a new kind of juice. Long-term, Shell sees a future for hydrogen as a backbone of a worldwide clean-energy network. Hydrogen isn’t an energy source; it’s an energy carrier. The idea is to produce wind and solar power where it’s cheap, use it to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, liquefy the hydrogen, and then—much as with today’s liquefied-natural-gas trade—ship the hydrogen to markets that are short of energy, where the hydrogen could be turned, by devices called fuel cells, into electricity. With its traders and tankers, Shell figures, it would be well positioned to sell that hydrogen wherever in the world the need was greatest—and the price was highest.

Shell also is entering the business of battery-powered electric cars. In October, it bought NewMotion, a Dutch company that operates more than 30,000 electric-car charging installations in Europe and that gives electric-car owners who sign up for its service access to about 50,000 other charging points. Shell won’t disclose what it paid for NewMotion, but the deal clearly was tiny by Shell standards. In 2016, according to filings, NewMotion lost $4.1 million on revenue of $13.5 million.

In December, Shell inked a bigger deal to buy First Utility, a U.K.-based merchant power and natural-gas utility. The companies didn’t disclose the details of the transaction.

Several large pension funds and money-management firms have criticized Shell for failing to take into sufficient account the potential that, when oil demand peaks and carbon constraints bite, Shell may find itself laden with stranded assets: untapped black gold it can’t profitably sell.

When I ask van Beurden about that argument, he calls it “a red herring,” saying Shell would decarbonize its portfolio to avoid any chance of stranded assets. But he also says he has ordered his internal analysts to compute the risk Shell would face if he failed. His question to them: “If I’m completely stupid in a world that is changing beyond recognition, in ways that we cannot imagine at this point in time, and we do not take account of it in our decision-making, what is the likelihood that I will end up with value at risk?” The study, Shell says, is due out in April.

That afternoon, as I leave Shell’s headquarters, I pass in the lobby a door-sized rectangular chunk of rock containing the fossilized remains of dozens of pecten, bivalve mollusks related to the scallop. The pecten shell is Shell’s logo. It was favored by one of the company’s forebears, whose family business in London had traded decorative seashells earlier in the 1800s. That was before the dawn of the Oil Age, the energy transition that would fuel the company’s real rise.

If its leaders can navigate today’s energy shift, Shell may well be operating a century hence, having moved from seashells to petroleum to?…?who knows? Solar? Wind? Something else?

If they don’t, the name Shell may come to evoke a different species: the dodo.

A version of this article appears in the Feb. 1, 2018 issue of Fortune with the headline “Shell Faces ‘Lower Forever’.”