Does it mean:
a. something that makes it difficult for oil to reach peak demand?
b. a way to protect money from being lost because of peak oil demand? (like definition 2 in the definition of hedge from Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary)
Seeing the writing on the wall, some oil companies are not sitting idle. Royal Dutch Shell, one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world, just decided to purchase NewMotion, a Dutch provider of EV recharging stations. The acquisition of the largest EV recharging station owner in Europe is clearly a hedge against peak oil demand. Shell also said that it would install EV recharging equipment at tens of thousands of its retail gasoline stations. Reuters reports that BP has also been in talks with EV recharging providers about installing equipment at their retail refueling stations.