Posts Tagged by Chevron
Is It Pointless to Care About Energy Policy?
| January 22, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Fossil Fuels |
Here’s a wonderful video presentation of Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire,’ the clever reminder that problems in the world are nothing new, and really nothing to get too concerned over. I infer that this philosophy must be quite dear to him, as he expresses it in many of his songs, e.g., The Angry Young Man:
There’s always a place for the angry young man
With his fist in the air and his head in the sand
He’s never been able to learn from mistakes
So he can’t understand why his heart always breaks
His honor is pure, and his courage as well
He’s fair and he’s true, and he’s boring as hell
And he’ll go to his grave as an angry old man.
….
I do believe I’ve passed the age
Of consciousness and righteous rage
I’ve found that just surviving was a noble fight
I once believed in causes too
I had my pointless point of view
But life went on no matter who was wrong or right.
While this is brilliant stuff, and extremely musical, Read More
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Ecuador — Achieving Justice in the Chevron Case?
| January 6, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Fossil Fuels |
30,000 people in Ecuador are one step closer to achieving justice in their case against Chevron. On Wednesday, an appellate court upheld the $9.5 billion judgement that would force the oil giant to pay for the clean up of a huge tract of land, damaged by Texaco, before its acquisition by Chevron. If you have a strong stomach, the talking points of the Chevron C-suite and PR team are at ChevronThinksWe’reStupid.org. And here’s a video made by Amazon Watch, a small but fierce non-profit that’s been working hard to focus world attention — and bring justice — to this horrific matter.
But how close are we to a resolution? Don’t hold your breath. As I’ve mentioned, Chevron’s team of attorneys is among the largest and most talented bunch of people on Earth. They’re playing for blood, and they’re licking their chops over the success that ExxonMobil enjoyed in dragging out its payment on the Valdez oil spill in Alaska for more than 25 years before agreeing to pay a small portion — over a quarter of a century later. No fewer than 8000 beneficiaries of the ExxonMobil restitution died while they were waiting for their money to come in.
This looks like a long, hard slog.
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Electric Transportation — Why Now and Not Decades Ago?
| August 11, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
When I have a few extra minutes, I blog on a range of other energy-related sites. A reader of one of these, EnergyCollective.com, writes:
Great article (meaning this one).
It’s unfortunate that this piece couldn’t have been written ten years ago. I am one of those people that does not understand why the EV community has not been talking about why we have not been driving more affordable, longer range EVs for the last ten years and why we had to wait for Li-ion technology when there was proven, less expensive, longer-lasting and recycleable NiMH (nickel metal hydride). Every time I see my friend’s 10 year old Toyota RAV4-EV go 100 miles on its original batteries (PEVE 95), I think it’a a crime against humanity; everyone could have been driving an even better NiMH powered car.
For some time now, I have listened to Chevron’s excuses about how they sold Cobasys and how it’s not their hot potato anymore without admitting that they or GM still controls the rights to NiMH for EVs. Their smokescreen is aided and abetted by the press which chooses to play dumb or is afraid to address the issue. The fact is that Chevron and GM still control NiMH use and are responsible for at least ten years of increased consumer transportation costs and more pollution than 10 Gulf Disasters.
Craig, am I preaching to the choir?
Perhaps, but I appreciate what you’ve said there, and you’re 100% on target. I never thought of it as a “crime against humanity,” as you put it, yet it’s actually quite apt. Thanks for writing.
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Peak Oil
| July 28, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Science |
For those trying to make sense of the concept of “peak oil,” i.e., the point at which the world capacity to extract oil from the Earth will have peaked, I’ve linked what I believe to be a good article.
Virtually no one doubts the basic concept. But how soon in our future (or how recently in our past) does that point lie? And what are its consequences?
A few weeks ago, a fine — and well-read friend told me over breakfast in New York, “Did you know that there’s enough oil under South Dakota to last 200 years?”
“That’s amazing,” I replied. “Then what’s all the fuss about?”
“Damn environmentalists.”
I’m not sure it’s that easy. The truth, which he, as an educated man should have known, is that we truly have exhausted the supply of easy-to-find oil, but that there is a huge deposit of shale/tar sands oil, whose economic and environmental costs of extraction are extreme.
Is there more oil? Yes. Does that provide us an easy answer? Not in the least.
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Government Subsidies to the Oil Companies
| May 19, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Politics |
All Americans should be aware of what’s happening in Washington in this critically important area that affects every one of us. Earlier this week, 48 Senators, including three Democrats and all but two Senate Republicans voted to defeat a bill that would have ended tax breaks for the five biggest oil companies.
What could cause such outrageous behavior? How about the $39.5 million that the oil and gas companies spent lobbying Congress in the first quarter of this year alone? Or might it be the fact that the industry donated nearly $18 million directly to the political campaigns of Senators who voted against ending these subsidies — five times more than to Senators who supported ending them?
Yet the measure to end these handouts to the oil industry came fairly close to passing (we needed 60 votes, and got 52). The message: if you care about things like this (and I have to think that most readers here do indeed), I urge you to exercise your rights as a citizen and let your elected leaders know where you stand on this.
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Chevron’s Situation in Ecuador Won’t Be Easily Dismissed
| May 13, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
It looks like Chevron’s situation in Ecuador is coming to a head. In a couple of weeks, the oil giant will face a watershed event in the court case in which it’s been ordered to pay $9.5 billion to repair the damage it did (operating as Texaco) to the people and environment of this formerly pristine part of the Amazon jungle. Here’s a video made by Amazon Watch, a small but fierce non-profit that’s been working hard to focus world attention — and bring justice — to this horrific matter.
In my mind, what makes this all the more disgusting is where it happened, and why it happened there. We’re talking about a company whose leaders premeditated to commit an atrocity in a part of the world populated with men, women and children in whom “civilization” simply has no interest. The people of the entire region are invisible; they hold no currency; they do not matter. If they had perpetrated the same thing in the US, the executives responsible would have been making license plates for the next 15 – 20 years — and they knew it. We have clear laws in place — and a judicial system that does manage to lock up an occasional CEO or two for gross violations. So the folks in charge thought they would make some money by destroying a remote part of the world, and its forgotten people — all with total impunity.
And even though decades of jurisprudence finally produced a crystal-clear guilty verdict, they just might pull it off. Chevron has deployed many hundreds of the world’s finest and best-paid litigators to the case, and have vowed to fight this to the bitter end. Besides, they must be heartened by the success that ExxonMobil enjoyed in dragging out its payments on the Valdez oil spill in Alaska for more than 25 years before agreeing to pay a small portion — over a quarter of a century later. No fewer than 8000 beneficiaries of the ExxonMobil restitution died while they were waiting for their money to come in. I have to imagine that Chevron finds this travesty most encouraging.
Sorry to have to bring you news like this. And it’s not all that good for me either, as I routinely take considerable flack when I present stuff of this kind.
But I do it anyway.
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Chevron Ordered to Pay Ecuador $8.6 Billion for Environmental Damages
| February 15, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
Those of us who have seen the film documentary “Crude” — as well as millions of others following the story — were heartened today as a court in Ecuador has ordered the oil giant Chevron to pay $8.6 billion for dumping billions of gallons of toxic oil waste into Ecuador’s rain forest. The judgement is one of the largest ever imposed for environmental contamination in any court.
However, we were not at all surprised to hear that Chevron said it would appeal the ruling. Hell, ExxonMobil robo-appealed the Valdez judgement, consistently postponing the payment of damages. Read More
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Chevron’s Sponsoring the PBS NewsHour
| November 8, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Fossil Fuels |
A few readers have objected to my post suggesting that Chevron’s sponsoring the PBS NewsHour could warp the objectivity of the coverage of the energy industry. Most of these responses point out that I have no proof that Chevron’s presence actually has created a slant, which is true. Others say that energy does not have to be an “us versus them” story.
I’m not a combative or suspicious person by nature, but there is no way that anyone can analyze the energy industry and not conclude that it is essentially “us vs. them.” The oil companies employ 7000 lobbyists whose job it is to influence our government in its favor. If they didn’t see the need to purchase that favor, they wouldn’t employ the biggest lobby on Earth. And they’ve been fantastically successful; Read More
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Should the News Coverage of the Energy Industry Meet Chevron's Approval?
| November 6, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
I don’t think of myself as overly suspicious of the motives of others. But I have to say that I recoil at the end of every PBS NewsHour when Jim Lehrer signs off and we’re told that the broadcast was sponsored by Chevron. The idea that the information I just received met the approval of an oil company, with its obvious interests vis-à-vis clean energy, is deeply offensive. It certainly makes me call into question the validity of everthing I just heard.
Why does Chevron target PBS? I think the answer it pretty obvious: Read More
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Oil Companies’ Participation in Clean Energy
| October 1, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
In the Renewable Energy Finance Forum session in which presenters from Citibank, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, and JP Morgan, offered their observations on the industry, several pointed to the strategies that multinational oil companies (BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, etc.) have vis-à-vis renewables. From the content of these talks, it became obvious that such participation is divisive – even within their own ranks — for a number of reasons.
While clean energy may be the way of the future, if you’re an oil company, it’s certainly the enemy of the present. Even the most aggressive repositioning of the oil companies as “energy companies” (BP as “beyond petroleum,” Chevron as “part of the solution” etc.) is such obvious PR fluff that it leaves most people with a very bad taste in their mouths about these entities’ sincerity and their status as corporate citizens.
On another line, from the standpoint of internal capital allocation, the return on asset stats associated with oil exploration beats the pants off the development of renewables. Thus prudent and responsible managers, who themselves are managed according to the short-term profits they drive, have only disincentive to push investments in renewables.
At the end of the day, we see a great ebb and flow, as internal arguments play themselves out.
