I don’t think this is it. It’s simply a question of return on investment.

If I had oil industry related investments, I would want:

• supply from my investments to go up.
• demand for my supplied goods/services to go up.

Now if I am a small investor, it would make sense for me to slowly sell off my oil assets and invest into green energy IF: – I believe that there are investment opportunities in green energy that will give me a better return on investment than my current oil investments.

Whenever I sell an investment to pivot to some other investment, I undermine the value of my current investment. How’s that? Because I’m increasing the supply of my investment asset. This lowers the price.

Basically, if my oil stock was worth x, and if I put it for sale on the market, it’s now worth x-y, where y is some positive number.

Again, if I’m a small investor, y will be tiny as I’m not really increasing the supply of the oil stock by much.

BUT. If I’m an oil oligarch… Well, y is going to be VERY HIGH. It does not make monetary sense for me to sell off my assets and move them to green energy. I don’t necessarily have confidence that my losses (y) would be recouped through the ROI from green energy.

I’m a selfish, unempathetic asshole. I want to maintain my wealth. Therefore, I take the cheaper way out -> influence the government to delay green investment, so that demand for oil doesn’t fall.