Probably. I do not know of any such sayings, and do not know much about markets and solvency and shorting in general.

Perhaps a better rephrasing would be that a naive first outside view should conclude that oil companies will be just as stuck-in-their-ways as other examples have been or still are.

Kawoomba also makes a few other good points that are worth considering, tough I'm not sure they all add up to them doing all that much better than everyone else on the "update for new technologies" front.