Outlook 2025: IOC investment myths need debunking

With a raft of scare stories around peak demand and climate change, 2025 should be the year smart investors leave the Big Oil bogeyman to the stuff of child’s play

IOCs are great assets. But rather than being a statement of the obvious, this is a contested claim due to cynicism over other more potentially lucrative options, questionable risks over stranded assets and slippery arguments over oil ethics. Investors should look again at the world’s best-kept secret. The problem is that IOCs are shrouded in spurious anti-oil hokum, with climate evangelism dressed up as sound energy investment advice. First up: the risk of stranded assets. With the global average timeline from discovery to production averaging around a decade, the line goes that, when institutional investors bankroll hydrocarbons, they are betting that demand for oil will stay high well into