Partnering with oil and gas producers is necessary for Amazon and other companies to achieve their climate goals, the tech giant's chief of sustainability, Kara Hurst, said during an Axios virtual event on Thursday.

The big picture: Amazon aims to hit carbon neutrality in 2040, 10 years earlier than the Paris climate accord. The company plans to reach its goal in part by helping companies develop climate-friendly technologies through a $2 billion venture fund. The first recipients were announced on Thursday.

Sudden changes in world politics can bring about permanent changes in oil-and-gas use, per a recent Morgan Stanley report.

Driving the news: Geopolitical unrest in the late '70s and early '80s — the Iranian Revolution and start of the Iran-Iraq war — disrupted a lot of oil supply that, in turn, sent prices skyrocketing. That sudden jolt to the global oil system permanently cut oil consumption per capita that’s stayed with the world ever since, says Martijn Rats, managing director for equity research for Morgan Stanley.

BP is providing more info this week about its decades-long plan to diversify away from its dominant fossil fuel business — including expectations for the first few years.

Why it matters: European-based global oil giants are all vowing some kind of decades-long pivot toward more climate-friendly products and deep emissions cuts.

The International Energy Agency this morning cut its estimate for the pace of global oil demand recovery from the depths of the pandemic-fueled collapse, and warned that "uncertainty created by COVID-19 shows little sign of abating."

Driving the news: The agency now projects that full-year 2020 global demand will be 8.4 million barrels per day less than in 2019, compared to 8.1 mbd in last month's estimate.

Global oil consumption is slated to plateau early this decade even without vastly stronger measures to combat climate change, BP said in a new analysis.

Why it matters: BP now sees this moment arriving a decade sooner than last year's version of their long-term outlook for oil-and-gas, coal, renewables, cars and more.

BP is making its first move into offshore wind via a new deal and partnership with Norway-based Equinor, which is developing big U.S. projects.

Driving the news: BP is paying Equinor $1.1 billion for a 50% stake in wind farms Equinor is developing off the coasts of New York and Massachusetts. The oil-and-gas companies — which are both making more moves into renewables — also announced a "strategic partnership" to jointly pursue other U.S. offshore projects.

Modeling the long-term future of global energy sources and demand was a fraught and dicey thing even before the once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, but we're about to see a bunch of analysts take their best swings.

Driving the news: Next week BP will unveil the big annual look-ahead to 2050, while next month will bring midcentury outlooks from the International Energy Agency and the Energy Information Administration.

It would be easy to feel some whiplash over recent Trump administration moves on oil-and-gas industry access — or lack thereof — to areas currently off-limits.

Driving the news: Trump used a Tuesday stop in Florida — a swing state with a huge electoral vote bounty — to announce an order that keeps the eastern Gulf of Mexico off-limits through 2032.

President Trump said Tuesday that he will extend a longstanding ban on offshore drilling off the coast of Florida, a critical 2020 swing state, and expand it to Georgia and South Carolina.

Why it matters: The announcement would further seal off the eastern Gulf of Mexico, a region long-coveted by oil companies.

The oil market's recovery from the depths of the pandemic-fueled collapse has gone into reverse lately.

Driving the news: Prices stalled in the low $40s per barrel for the U.S. benchmark WTI several months ago and have been losing ground in recent days.