Warren Buffett’s big bets on oil are betraying the climate

Warren Buffett made his billions by being a contrarian investor. “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful,” one Buffett dogma runs; “detach yourself from the crowd,” he said elsewhere. But his recent bets on oil companies are contrarian in a new way, doubling down on fossil fuels when the rest of the world is trying to divest from it.

By the end of 2021, more than 1,400 institutions (pdf), with $39.2 trillion in assets under management, had committed to selling some or all of their stakes in fossil fuels. Buffet, though, is doing the opposite. His investment company, Berkshire Hathaway, became Chevron’s fourth-largest equity stakeholder in April, the value of its investment jumping to $25.9 billion, from $4.5 billion in Dec. 2021.

Berkshire has simultaneously been buying up shares in Occidental Petroleum. After first buying $10 billion in preferred Occidental shares in 2019, Buffett repeatedly topped up his stake this year, becoming the company’s largest shareholder with nearly 19% of it. And according to at least one analyst, Berkshire may want to purchase all of Occidental.

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