J2. Fossil Fuel Industry

BRUSSELS — A leaked letter signed by more than 100 food and beverage company CEOs, including Coca-Cola, Heineken, McDonald’s, Kraft Heinz and Mondelez, is calling on European Union institutions to delay and reopen key provisions of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), just months before implementation is set to begin in August 2026.

On 29 April, CEOs requested EU institutions to delay key implementation timelines and revise provisions. If acted upon, requests could weaken restrictions on harmful PFAS chemicals in food packaging, and expand exemptions to keep large volumes of single-use packaging on the market, undermining the EU’s objective to reduce packaging waste at a time when waste levels remain high. Notably, a number of signatories and active sponsors of this initiative are headquartered outside the EU, raising questions about the extent to which corporate interests beyond Europe are seeking to undermine democratically agreed EU law.

A broad alliance of over 160 Break Free From Plastic members and allies, communities impacted by plastic and PFAS pollution, universities, consumer rights organisations and businesses committed to reuse, have sent a letter in response urging EU leaders to reject this lobbying push and uphold the Regulation as agreed by the European Parliament, Council and Commission.

They have warned that reopening agreed legislation at this stage risks weakening environmental protections, undermines regulatory certainty for companies already investing in compliance, and sets a precedent for corporate influence over environmental law after adoption. 

Companies have shaped the Regulation and have had years to prepare

The PPWR, one of the most heavily lobbied EU files, was adopted through the full legislative procedure, following extensive public and industry consultation. Companies have had both regulatory clarity and guidance to adapt their business models and supply chains.

Environmental and health groups argue that reopening agreed provisions would erode trust in the legislative process and deflect responsibility for democratically agreed environmental commitments back onto EU institutions. 

Public commitments contradicted by private lobbying

There is a contradiction between the voluntary sustainability commitments made by major brands and their behind-the-scenes policy positions. Several signatory companies have presented themselves as climate and circular economy leaders, yet are now seeking to weaken packaging reduction rules, delay chemical safety measures, and limit implementation of reuse systems. However, the PPWR mandatory reuse targets exist precisely because recycling alone cannot deliver the structural shift Europe needs to reduce packaging waste.

The lobbying push is creating collateral damage for businesses,  including major market players, that are genuinely committed to the success of the regulation and are already investing in the transition. Companies that have already started to adapt their supply chains around PPWR compliance are now facing unnecessary regulatory uncertainty, putting planned investments and innovation at risk. 

The power of precedent

The outcome of this lobbying effort will be closely watched across Europe and beyond as governments around the world consider similar packaging and plastics policies. If corporate lobbying succeeds in reopening a regulation weeks before it applies, it risks signalling that even landmark environmental law remains vulnerable to last-minute, covert lobbying pressure, regardless of democratic process. 

Marco Musso, Deputy Policy Manager for Circular Economy at the European Environmental Bureau, said: 

''It is disappointing to witness yet another attempt to delay and dilute a legislation designed to protect citizens and to stop the uncontrolled growth of packaging waste. Fortunately, the usual suspects behind the CEO letter do not speak for the majority of the packaging value chain. Across Europe a multitude of businesses, including major players, remain genuinely supportive of the regulation and are already investing to prepare for it. We stand with the EU institutions to preserve the integrity of the regulation and ensure effective implementation.”

Emma Priestland, Corporate Campaigns Coordinator for the Break Free From Plastic movement, said: 

“The letter sent by some of the world’s biggest users and polluters of plastic is a shocking example of corporations trying to override the democratic will of 27 countries. Their last minute attempt to derail this vital piece of legislation shows a frankly appalling disregard for the wishes, safety and wellbeing of their own customers. Companies should be focusing on ending their reliance on single-use packaging rather than influencing the law of an entire region.”

Sam Pearse, Campaigns Director from Story of Stuff, said: 

“The PPWR is a direct response to decades of fast-moving consumer goods companies shifting to disposable packaging—shedding microplastics and harmful chemicals while pushing their costs onto society. Now, some of those same companies, including U.S.-based corporations like McDonald’s, claim to support the law’s intent after pouring resources into weakening it and carving out exemptions. Their complaints ring hollow. The PPWR sets a critical global benchmark for moving away from throwaway packaging. EU leaders must hold the line — the world is watching.”

Catia De Cao, from Italian civil society network Rete Zero PFAS Italia, said: 

"I am deeply concerned about PFAS, having grown up in a region of Italy’s Veneto that has been severely affected by ‘forever chemical’ contamination. Years of exposure have left many people in my community with dangerously high levels of PFAS in their blood, increasing the risk of a multitude of serious health issues. But regardless of whether people live in pollution hotspots or not, we are all exposed to PFAS on a daily basis, as it is commonly used in food and beverage packaging. To protect people’s health - and especially the health of the youngest generations - the European Commission must go ahead with the ban of PFAS in food packaging.”

 

Notes to the editor

• Read the Break Free From Plastic and allies’ response letter here
• Read the leaked CEO letter here
• The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation text and implementation timeline: 2025/40 

Press Contacts: 

• Bethany Spendlove Keeley, European Communications Manager Break Free From Plastic | Bethany@breakfreefromplastic.org | +49 (0)176 595 87 941
• Caroline Will, Communications Coordinator Rethink Plastic alliance | caroline@rethinkplasticalliance.org | +32 456 56 07 05

FracTracker documented early construction and demolition activity at the former Homer City coal plant, now being redeveloped into a fracked gas-powered AI and high-performance computing campus in Indiana County, Pennsylvania.

The post From Coal Plant to AI Campus: FracTracker Documents Construction at Homer City appeared first on FracTracker Alliance.

AI image concept: A giant Shell logo-shaped cash register sitting on an oil-slicked shoreline, ringing up “$6.9bn” while distant tankers pass through a smoky, war-lit Strait of Hormuz. In the foreground, a tiny green sapling labelled “transition” is being watered with a golden petrol pump nozzle

DISCLAIMER: This article is opinion/commentary. It is not financial advice, investment advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security. It relies on publicly available reporting, company statements, and cited sources. Site wide disclaimer also applies.

The war dividend nobody wants to call a war dividend

There are quarters when an oil major merely makes money, and then there are quarters when the geopolitical horror show performs like an unpaid member of the trading desk.

Shell’s first quarter of 2026 appears to sit firmly in the second category. The company reported adjusted earnings of about $6.9 billion, more than double the previous quarter and above analyst expectations, helped by market volatility linked to the Iran war and disruption across global energy routes. The Times reported that Shell’s adjusted profits rose 23% year-on-year and were more than double the previous quarter, with trading, refining, marketing and gas-market volatility doing much of the heavy lifting.

So there it is: another majestic chapter in the sacred corporate scripture of “operational performance”, where instability becomes opportunity, crisis becomes margin, and the planet is invited to admire the spreadsheet.

Shell’s official line, naturally, was polished to a boardroom shine. In its first-quarter release, chief executive Wael Sawan said the company delivered “strong results” in a quarter marked by “unprecedented disruption in global energy markets”.   Translation, for those without a refinery-grade euphemism filter: the world shook, prices swung, traders pounced, and shareholders got another warm bath.

The company also raised its dividend by 5% and announced a $3 billion share buyback, though that buyback was smaller than some previous rounds.   The result is a familiar tableau: public anxiety over energy security on one side, private capital returns on the other, and Shell standing in the middle looking solemn while counting.

The war dividend nobody wants to call a war dividend

Let us be precise. Shell did not cause the Iran war. Shell is not being accused here of causing the conflict. But when oil and gas markets convulse, companies with enormous trading operations can benefit from the volatility. That is not a conspiracy theory; it is the business model doing yoga.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Shell’s chemicals and products division, which includes oil trading, produced $1.93 billion in adjusted profit in the first quarter, compared with $449 million a year earlier, with trading boosted by volatile markets.   Bloomberg had already reported in April that Shell said its oil trading results were “significantly higher” than in the previous quarter as the Middle East conflict disrupted global energy markets.

This is the part where the industry asks everyone to be mature. Energy markets are complicated. Supply security matters. Traders provide liquidity. Pipelines do not run on hashtags. All true. Also true: the spectacle of a fossil-fuel giant harvesting bumper earnings from war-driven volatility while continuing to brand itself as a steward of the energy transition is the sort of thing satire struggles to improve upon.

Even Shell’s operational side took hits. Reports noted damage and disruption affecting Shell’s Middle East-linked gas operations, including the Pearl gas-to-liquids facility in Qatar, with production impacts expected to continue.   Yet the earnings machine still roared. Apparently, if one part of the fossil empire catches fire, another part can sell tickets to the flames.

The transition that keeps finding new oil and gas to love

Shell’s climate messaging remains an exquisitely engineered balancing act: one foot planted on “net zero by 2050”, the other pressing firmly on the accelerator of oil, LNG and gas expansion.

Shell says its target is to become a net-zero emissions energy business by 2050, and its 2024 Energy Transition Strategy says the company aims to provide energy today while building the energy system of the future.   It also says it will continue efforts to halve Scope 1 and 2 operational emissions by 2030 compared with 2016.

Fine. But the climate problem is not limited to the emissions from Shell’s own boilers, platforms and office lights. The really vast emissions come when customers burn the oil and gas. And this is where the corporate choreography gets less Swan Lake and more oil tanker reversing into a wind farm.

In April 2026, Shell announced an agreement to acquire Canadian gas producer ARC Resources, a company focused on the Montney shale basin in British Columbia and Alberta.   The Times characterised the deal as a strategic move to strengthen Shell’s shale portfolio and reserves, in a context where investors were watching reserve life and future production closely.

Shell buying more gas assets while talking about transition is not a contradiction, according to Shell. It is “energy security”. It is “resilience”. It is “value”. It is every corporate noun in the drawer except the obvious one: expansion.

This is an old Shell habit. The Reuters source supplied for this piece points back to Shell’s 2007 move to buy out minority shareholders in Shell Canada, then one of Canada’s major oil, gas and oil-sands producers and refiners. Reuters reported at the time that some minority shareholders argued the offer undervalued the Canadian unit’s prospects.   Nearly two decades later, the geography changes, the buzzwords evolve, and the gravitational pull remains the same: hydrocarbons, preferably in large quantities.

Investors: the silent choir in very expensive seats

No discussion of Shell is complete without mentioning the institutional money standing quietly behind the curtain, applauding with spreadsheets.

MarketScreener’s shareholder data for Shell lists major holders including Norges Bank Investment Management at about 3.24%, The Vanguard Group at about 3.23%, BlackRock Investment Management (UK) at about 2.69%, BlackRock Advisors (UK) at about 1.56%, and SSgA Funds Management at about 1.54%.

These are not fringe investors. These are the heavy furniture of global capitalism: pension money, index money, sovereign wealth money, passive money that somehow manages to be very passive until dividends arrive.

This matters because Shell’s strategy is not performed in an empty theatre. It is performed for investors who have often rewarded discipline, buybacks, dividends and fossil-fuel cash generation. In plain English: Shell is not improvising alone. It is dancing for an audience that knows the steps.

And the steps are obvious: keep the oil-and-gas engine profitable, trim or discipline lower-return green ventures, talk about net zero at a safe altitude, and return cash aggressively enough that major shareholders do not start throwing chairs.

The courtroom wobble and the climate credibility gap

Shell’s climate record is not merely a matter of campaign slogans. It has been fought over in court.

In 2021, a Dutch district court ordered Shell to cut its worldwide aggregate net carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 compared with 2019 levels. In November 2024, The Hague Court of Appeal overturned that specific order. Shell welcomed the ruling, saying its 2050 net-zero target remained central to strategy and that it continued work to halve operational emissions by 2030.

Shell’s legal win, however, did not magically decarbonise its business model. It removed a specific court-imposed target. It did not remove the atmosphere, the carbon budget, the physics, or the awkward fact that “we’ll get there by 2050” has become the corporate climate equivalent of “the cheque is in the post”.

The court appeal ruling gave Shell breathing room. Shell appears to have used some of that breathing room to inhale more gas.

Energy security: the industry’s favourite magic cloak

The phrase “energy security” now performs heroic labour for the fossil-fuel sector. It can mean keeping homes heated, factories powered and supply chains functioning. It can also mean giving oil and gas companies a gleaming moral vocabulary for doing what they already wanted to do.

Shell’s 2025 Annual Report page says the report covers financial, operational, strategic and sustainability performance, and Shell’s chair said the company was becoming more competitive and resilient in a “fragmented and complex” world.   That language is not accidental. Fragmentation and complexity are now the corporate weather system in which oil majors thrive: storm clouds above, buybacks below.

The company’s defenders will say the world still needs oil and gas. They are not wrong. The world does still consume vast quantities of both. But that argument becomes rather less noble when used to justify every fresh fossil investment, every new gas basin, every LNG growth narrative, and every shareholder payout wrapped in a transition ribbon.

At some point, “meeting demand” begins to look suspiciously like preserving demand.

The green costume, the black liquid

Shell has invested in lower-carbon businesses, EV charging, biofuels, hydrogen and carbon capture. Shell itself says it planned to invest $10–15 billion in low-carbon energy solutions between 2023 and the end of 2025, and that it invested $5.6 billion in low-carbon solutions in 2023.

But the question is not whether Shell has any green spending. The question is whether the company’s overall direction is compatible with the speed and scale of decarbonisation required. A fossil-fuel giant can place solar panels in the brochure while continuing to build its future around gas, trading and hydrocarbon extraction. The brochure may be greener. The business model still smells of crude.

The Q1 2026 numbers sharpen the point. Shell’s profit surge did not come from a sudden global outbreak of wind turbines. It came from fossil markets doing what fossil markets do in crisis: spiking, convulsing, rewarding those positioned to profit from scarcity and fear.

Shell did not invent that system. It merely sits magnificently inside it, polishing the brass.

Conclusion: Shell’s transition is going exactly where the money tells it to go

Shell wants to be seen as pragmatic. In a sense, it is. It is pragmatically following the cash. It is pragmatically rewarding shareholders. It is pragmatically using “energy security” as the all-purpose password for continued fossil-fuel relevance.

The problem is that climate stability is not impressed by pragmatism measured in quarterly returns. Nor is the public likely to be charmed forever by the spectacle of oil majors banking billions from volatility while asking everyone else to admire their net-zero mood board.

Shell’s first quarter of 2026 is not just a financial event. It is a morality play with an investor deck: war volatility, bumper profits, shareholder payouts, gas acquisitions, climate pledges and a transition strategy that seems permanently stuck in the departure lounge.

Shell says it is building the energy system of the future. Perhaps. But judging by the cash register, the future still has a very large oil slick underneath it.

Spoof Shell PR Spin: “Please Stop Calling It a War Windfall, We Prefer ‘Geopolitical Value Creation’”

Shell today proudly confirmed that it remains fully committed to delivering more value with fewer awkward questions.

In a quarter marked by unprecedented global disruption, Shell’s world-class trading teams demonstrated the company’s unique ability to transform market chaos into shareholder comfort. While some observers have described this as “profiting from volatility linked to war”, Shell prefers the more responsible phrase: resilience-led monetisation of unfortunate events beyond our control.

We remain deeply committed to the energy transition, which is why we continue to say “net zero by 2050” at regular intervals while investing in the oil and gas required to keep civilisation, industry analysts, and dividend expectations functioning.

Our recent Canadian gas acquisition should not be misunderstood as fossil-fuel expansion. It is a carefully calibrated act of transition-adjacent hydrocarbon stewardship. Gas, as everyone in our investor relations department knows, is not really a fossil fuel when described in a soothing enough voice.

Shell thanks its shareholders, including major global asset managers and institutional investors, for their continued confidence in our strategy of balancing climate ambition, energy security and extremely large sums of money.

Spoof Bot-Reaction / Comment Section

@DividendDruid: Amazing quarter. Thoughts and prayers to volatility, the unsung hero of shareholder returns.

@NetZeroByWhenever: Shell’s transition plan is very clear: transition from last quarter’s profits to much bigger profits.

@FossilFuelFan1978: People complain, but without oil companies, who would bravely monetise geopolitical instability?

@GreenwashDetector: I love when companies say “lower emissions” while buying more gas. Very minimalist climate policy. Barely there.

@IndexFundGhost: As a passive investor, I passively receive the benefits and actively deny responsibility.

@EnergySecurityEnjoyer: Every time someone says “energy security”, a buyback gets its wings.

@PlanetaryBoundaries: I have reviewed the quarterly results and would like to resign from Earth.

@ShellPRIntern: Please remember: it is not a fossil-fuel expansion strategy. It is a molecule-forward resilience platform.

@CashRegisterAtHormuz: Ding.

@ActualClimateScience: This comment has been delayed due to insufficient investor enthusiasm.

Shell’s War-Volatility Jackpot: Nothing Says “Energy Transition” Like $6.9 Billion and Another Fossil-Fuel Shopping Trip was first posted on May 7, 2026 at 7:46 pm.
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