James Leaton of the Carbon Tracker Initiative, an investment-focused NGO, says that in one report Shell tried to downplay the role of private oil companies in generating greenhouse gases, seeking to shift the blame instead to national state-controlled firms with larger reserves. “We don’t need 50 pages of glossy documents,” he says. “Give us two pages and tell us what high-cost projects you would cancel.”

On the same day as the reports were published, Shell informed its employees that it was creating a “New Energies” business to invest in green technologies. But it and BP insist that hydrocarbons will still account for at least 75% of the world’s energy for decades to come. Their response to global warming is to promote natural gas over coal and, eventually, oil; renewable energy remains a tiny share of their investment budgets. “Rumours of the death of oil are a little premature,” says Peter Mather, head of BP’s British business.

The only supermajor that wins high marks from shareholders for what they say is a more committed response to climate change is Total SA, a French company, which like Shell hosts its AGM on May 24th. It plans to set out its ambition to develop an energy mix by 2035 consistent with Paris-style global-warming limits, including a pledge to invest $500m a year in renewables, and a “symbolic objective” to raise their share to 20% of its portfolio, from 3%. In an effort to complement its acquisition of SunPower, an American solar-energy company, in 2011, it launched an offer this month to acquire Saft, a French battery-maker, which will bolster its expertise in electricity storage.

But Total is likely to remain an oil and gas company above all else. Alongside its renewables aspirations, it claims that one of its most exciting ventures is producing natural gas in the pristine Russian Arctic. It does not see this as a contradiction. In fact, it argues that the focus on natural gas actually reflects its commitment to a two-degree global-warming scenario. From under their habits, French nuns may murmur growing disapproval in response.