Royal Dutch Shell gives up, UK takes away

Here are some numbers: 52, 90, 125. These are the totals, in billions of dollars, taken from Royal Dutch Shell's strategic update this week, dividends and redemptions that the company has paid and s & d Is waiting to pay every five years. until 2025. The market has welcomed this extraordinary forecast with indifference.

Oil companies are almost as old-fashioned as tobacco, as increasing environmental hysteria is pushing more and more funds to abandon them. As a result, the price of their shares is under pressure and Shell is reporting about 6% of the dividend (in dollars) that the CEO intends to increase.

You may not notice it because of the excitement of renewable energy, but oil feeds the global economy and will continue to do so well beyond 2025. On the scale global, it does not matter that the last act of Theresa May is to meet the fantasies of the Climate Change Committee and impose on Britain the obligation to reduce its net carbon emissions to zero by 2050 .

It matters a lot to the United Kingdom. In a rare rush of honesty on this topic this week, Philip Hammond has published shocking calculations of the Treasury. Achieving the zero goal would cost 1 billion pounds, which would require cutting health and education spending while eliminating some of the UK industry.

The United Kingdom already has an impossible obligation under the Climate Change Act. Mr Hammond pointed out that we are not on the right track to achieve this, adding that an "ambitious policy response" is needed for the 2050 goal to be credible. He is too polite or nervous to say that politics should persuade us to become poorer, confident that we are saving the planet.

In fact, what the UK is doing makes almost no difference to global CO2 emissions or the price of oil. Shell's ambitious new targets are based on $ 60 per barrel, but the oil price forecast is a game that makes the experts ridiculous. There will be fluctuations between saturation and shortage, but you can be (reasonably) certain of Shell (dividend).

To save them from themselves

It is hard to blame London Capital & Finance's clients for appealing to their lawyers in an attempt to recover the £ 236 million they invested in the collapsed firm. The returns offered by the "mini-bonds" seemed too good to be true. Indeed, they were, but now, as it is modern, you have to find someone else than the 11,500 greedy buyers to pay the bill.

Their most promising solution is the financial services clearing system, which this week decided to find a possible way to force the rest of the financial services sector to spit. Resuming its original view that the obligations were not part of the system, the text now states: "An increasingly important aspect is the need to take into account the different ways in which investors have treated the company".

This is the legal equivalent of "more research is needed", and the bills will go up quickly. Here, there are shades of Barlow Clowes, a fraudulent company that has also collapsed after claiming to generate a high return on low risk investments. In his diaries, the British Conservative MP Alan Clark recalled that Margaret Thatcher had been agonized for the purpose of remunerating investors.

"Yes," he said, "they were greedy but small. These are the big greedy who should be punished. It is likely that CFL investors will eventually be bailed out after legitimate gunfire and a carapace on both sides. If so much effort was made to bring the firm's promoters to justice, the chances of the next scandal occurring would be less.

John in Wonderland

John McDonnell, Labor's soft-spoken executioner, confessed to The Times last week that he sometimes cried. He does not shed tears for privatized British utility owners, whom he would buy at a staggering price if he had the chance.

His eyes will not be wet at the thought of those who earn more than £ 80,000 by paying more income tax, nor to shareholders who expect to see their property gradually confiscated by the state. Unlike his boss, he is extremely serious and can overcome his tendency to tear:

"I'm crying on you," says the walrus: "I deeply sympathize."
With tears and tears, he sorted out / those of the bigger size.

A complete list of Neil Collins' financial interests is available at www.ft.com/collinsportfolio.