BlackRock has a problem with Texas. In this Republican stronghold, the world's leading financier is seen as a "woke" corporation, the ultimate insult. And their "wokeness" has grown stronger after the group took a stand in favor of more responsible social and environmental practices.

Their commitments have often been contested by environmentalists, but they have established Blackrock's reputation in Houston and Dallas. So it's hardly surprising that the leading oil-producing state in the United States doesn't take this kind of attitude from a company that manages over $9 trillion in assets worldwide.

It may have found a way to patch things up with the Big Oil cowboys who pride themselves on their mud-stained boots in the Permian Basin oil fields, America's largest and its biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. BlackRock just signed a major agreement with local star Occidental Petroleum (Oxy). It will invest $500 million in a plant for the direct capture and burial of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It will own 40% of what promises to be, by 2025, the world's largest unit in this field. It alone plans to swallow 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. That's far more than the 36,000 tonnes promised by the world's only industrial facility in this field, located in Iceland.

Oil companies see nothing but advantages in this carbon capture technology, either in the air or right out of the plant's chimneys. The activity is close to their core expertise and enables them to continue exploiting their oil rather than having to venture into other, far less lucrative businesses, such as wind or solar power. It could even be a very profitable business for Oxy. Firstly, because it has already sold carbon credits to companies such as Airbus, which are keen to green their balance sheets, but also because this will enable it to... produce more oil. The CO₂ buried in the Permian deposits will push the remaining oil out.

Environmental organizations are understandably furious and see this as a ploy to resist the energy transition and the associated reduction in hydrocarbon production. This technology, subsidized by the federal government, has yet to prove its effectiveness on an industrial scale, and its cost is currently prohibitive in relation to the emissions reductions it promises.

According to the International Energy Agency, the most optimistic scenarios predict that 85 million tonnes of CO₂ will be processed in this type of plant in 2030 and 980 in 2050. In other words, peanuts, compared to the 40 billion tonnes of carbon released every year by human activity. It's hardly the revolution that will save black gold from its doomed fate.