Posts Tagged by ExxonMobil
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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Why Energy Policy Doesn’t Contemplate the Future
| January 18, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Fossil Fuels |
Frequent commenter “Shivrat” writes:
Great that solar investment is increasing so rapidly, and agreed that many challenges lie ahead, but would you say that a paradigm shift to renewables is inevitable in the long term? After all, something like 80% of oil is produced in 6 countries, and 90% of natural gas reserves lie in 3 countries, right? Given that global energy demand is set to increase by 50% in the next few decades, wouldn’t market forces seem to make it futile for anyone to resist (fossil fuels’) decline in the long term?
This is an excellent question – one that surprisingly few people ask. The basic answer is the short-term focus of most people and entities.
I happened to ask a friend who runs a very successful hedge fund 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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2GreenEnergy’s Financial Wizard Bill Paul on Shale Gas
| December 19, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Fossil Fuels |
2GreenEnergy financial guru Bill Paul has a natural gift for looking at the macro issues affecting renewables. Here’s a high-level summary of his thinking on clean energy vis-à-vis shale gas, in which he summarizes:
There’s a distinct possibility that Wall Street’s going to start diverting big bucks away from green tech and into shale gas, if it hasn’t already. I see the billions going into shale gas infrastructure posing a huge impediment to developing clean tech. Read More
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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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Is the Development of Electric Vehicles Throttled by the Oil Companies?
| July 4, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
Frequent commenter Phil Manke writes:
Hey Craig,
To what extent do you think retail gasoline price levels depend on these government subsidies to oil companies? Do you think gasoline prices would rise significantly if and when subsidies are cut back? Isn’t this the real reason that no politician will champion the trimming of these subsidies? Recent history shows there is significant public backlash when gasoline prices spike. Do you think the lagging development of electric autos and alternate transportation methods is throttled by the petroleum companies? If so, in what ways?
Hi, Phil. Yes, I am told that if we yank the subsidies, gasoline prices will rise somewhat; perhaps $1 – $2 from their current levels. This would cause a significant back off in consumption, and create a real demand for electric transportation, which in my estimation is a good thing.
Regarding your question about the oil companies, I haven’t studied this thoroughly. But look at the dynamics behind what we in California went through behind our Proposition 23 last year. Oil giants Valero and Tesoro were the visible supporters of a bill that, if passed, would have crippled our movement for clean energy/transportation with a maelstrom of lies; they spent tens of millions of dollars in a (nearly successful) attempt to convince voters that clean energy would cause the death of our economy.
A friend told me that ExxonMobil also funded the bill, but worked hard to remain anonymous, and make sure their name would not be associated with it. And of course a few years earlier, Exxon admitted to (and agreed to stop) funding sham research companies whose only purpose was to discredit the theory of global warming.
As I wrote here:
‘ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer,” said Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Director of Strategy & Policy. “A modest but effective investment has allowed the oil giant to fuel doubt about global warming to delay government action just as Big Tobacco did for over 40 years.’
If you Google the subject, you’ll find tons of material on it.
Working with the oil companies is often referred to as “going to the dark side.” Looks like there’s a good reason for that….
Thanks for your excellent questions, Phil.
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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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Oil Companies and Renewable Energy
| November 21, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
When my father left this Earth a couple of months ago, he left me some stock in ExxonMobil. I posted my musings on the subject here, on my blog at Renewable Energy World.
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Fossil Fuels and Renewable Energy Sources – Some Business Considerations
| November 15, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Fossil Fuels |
I often think about how the energy industry’s financial analysts view the fundamentals that apply to market valuations. Just now, I was reading some of the discussion at SeekingAlpha.com on ExxonMobil that attempts to get to the underlying buy/sell recommendations, and I note that the conversation is fairly bullish across the board.
In particular, though there is widespread agreement that the “easy oil is gone,” there is almost no recognition of a concerted move to get off of oil as a civilization. Moreover, the concept of “peak oil” (i.e., that the supply of oil will soon start to diminish) means that the price will soar, and that only companies with the scale of ExxonMobil (vs. the wildcatters of yore) will have the capability to play effectively. But there is precious little talk of the impact of electric transportation, or renewable energy in any of its forms.
I’m trying to figure out what that means. Here are a few points of speculation: 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.
