by Taylor Marsh J. Stephen Simon, Director, Senior VP of ExxonMobil (retired 2008) dies. That will be the official line. But he was simply the…
Posts Tagged ‘Oil’
Nigerian militants claim attack on Lagos oil jetty
July 13th, 2009 |
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Nigeria’s main rebel group, which has targeted oil facilities in the south, claimed responsibility for an audacious late Sunday strike on an oil jetty in Lagos in its first attack in the country’s economic heart. “Heavily armed Mend fighters today, Sunday, July 12, 2009, at about 2230 hours
Raymond J. Learsy: Wall Street Stampedes To The Aid of the Oil Speculators!
July 12th, 2009 |
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Are banks meant to help the economy or to go back to business as usual in helping to destroy it?
Oil giants grumble at Nigeria’s oil reforms
July 12th, 2009 |
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A proposed law aimed at sweeping reforms of Nigeria’s oil sector is almost halfway through the legislative stages of approval but some of its provisions are sending jitters among giant oil operators. Multi-national oil companies, already buckling under incessant militant attacks which have
Jodie Allen: How’s That Again?
July 11th, 2009 |
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Wasn’t the fact that American consumers have been borrowing and spending their way into financial oblivion in recent years a major cause of the current economic collapse?
Allison Kilkenny: Why Did President Obama Choose Ghana as His Africa Destination?
July 11th, 2009 |
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A quarter of US oil imports are expected to come from West Africa by 2015. That could explain why Obama chose Ghana over, say, his father’s homeland of Kenya.
Bob Dinneen: The Days of Energy Malaise Are Over
July 11th, 2009 |
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So when are we going to wake up to the fact that our dependence on imported oil is worse than in the days of Carter’s “malaise”? And what are we going to do about it?
Asda cuts petrol price to 99.9p a litre
July 9th, 2009 |
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• ‘There is no justification for any major retailer selling fuel above £1,’ says supermarket
• Average charge for unleaded petrol is now 103.8p a litre
Supermarket chain Asda cut its fuel prices to 99.9p a litre today, saying there was little justification for charging more than £1 at the pumps.
The price cut was made on petrol and diesel at the company’s 176 forecourts.
Commercial director David Miles said: “There is no justification for any major retailer selling fuel above £1 a litre – that is why we are delighted to be able to reduce petrol and diesel to 99.9p a litre for all our customers in line with falling costs.
“Asda is offering value to all drivers nationwide and we can guarantee all our customers that they’ll get a fair price for their fuel no matter what they fill up with at the pump.”
Diesel prices have previously been higher than petrol, but Asda said current costs meant that this should no longer be the case.
According to website petrolprices.com, the average charge for unleaded petrol yesterday was 103.8p, ranging between 99.9p and 115.9p, while the average for diesel was 105.3p, ranging between 99.9p and 117.0p.
The price of crude oil has been on the rise in recent months, but at just over $60 a barrel it is still less than half the $140 level it reached at its height last year.
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The fight for the Peruvian rainforest
July 7th, 2009 |
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The extraordinary story of how Peru’s Indians are fighting to the death to protect their way of life and their rainforest
ExxonMobil funds climate sceptics
July 1st, 2009 |
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Records show ExxonMobil gave hundreds of thousands of pounds to lobby groups that have published ‘misleading and inaccurate information’ about climate change
The world’s largest oil company is continuing to fund lobby groups that question the reality of global warming, despite a public pledge to cut support for such climate change denial, a new analysis shows.
Company records show that ExxonMobil handed over hundreds of thousands of pounds to such lobby groups in 2008. These include the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) in Dallas, Texas, which received $75,000 (£45,500), and the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC, which received $50,000.
According to Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, at the London School of Economics, both the NCPA and the Heritage Foundation have published “misleading and inaccurate information about climate change.”
On its website, the NCPA says: “NCPA scholars believe that while the causes and consequences of the earth’s current warming trend is [sic] still unknown, the cost of actions to substantially reduce CO2 emissions would be quite high and result in economic decline, accelerated environmental destruction, and do little or nothing to prevent global warming regardless of its cause.”
The Heritage Foundation published a “web memo” in December that said: “Growing scientific evidence casts doubt on whether global warming constitutes a threat, including the fact that 2008 is about to go into the books as a cooler year than 2007″. Scientists, including those at the UK Met Office say that the apparent cooling is down to natural changes and does not alter the long-term warming trend.
In its 2008 corporate citizenship report, published last year, ExxonMobil said it would cut funds to several groups that “divert attention” from the need to find new sources of clean energy.
The NCPA and Heritage Foundation are included among groups funded by ExxonMobil, according to details of its “2008 Worldwide Contributions and Community Investments” published recently.
Ward said: “ExxonMobil has been briefing journalists for three years that they were going to stop funding these groups. The reality is that they are still doing it. If the world’s largest oil company wants to fund climate change denial then it should be upfront about it, and not tell people it has stopped.”
In 2006, Ward, then at the Royal Society, wrote to ExxonMobil to challenge the company’s funding of such lobby groups. The move, revealed in the Guardian, prompted accusations of censorship and debate about whether experts should “police” the distribution of scientific information.
In an article on the Guardian website, Ward writes: “I have now written again to ExxonMobil to point out that these organisations publish misleading information about climate change on their websites, and to seek guidance on how to reconcile this fact with the pledge made by the company. I believe that the company should keep its promise by ending its financial support for lobby groups that mislead the public about climate change.”
ExxonMobil said it annually reviews and adjusts its contributions to policy research groups. A spokesman said: “Only ExxonMobil speaks for ExxonMobil and our position on climate change is clear. We have the same concerns as people everywhere, and that is how to provide the world with the energy it needs while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We take the issue of climate change seriously and the risks warrant action.”
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ExxonMobil funds climate sceptics
July 1st, 2009 |
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Records show ExxonMobil gave hundreds of thousands of pounds to lobby groups that have published ‘misleading and inaccurate information’ about climate change
The world’s largest oil company is continuing to fund lobby groups that question the reality of global warming, despite a public pledge to cut support for such climate change denial, a new analysis shows.
Company records show that ExxonMobil handed over hundreds of thousands of pounds to such lobby groups in 2008. These include the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) in Dallas, Texas, which received $75,000 (£45,500), and the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC, which received $50,000.
According to Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, at the London School of Economics, both the NCPA and the Heritage Foundation have published “misleading and inaccurate information about climate change.”
On its website, the NCPA says: “NCPA scholars believe that while the causes and consequences of the earth’s current warming trend is [sic] still unknown, the cost of actions to substantially reduce CO2 emissions would be quite high and result in economic decline, accelerated environmental destruction, and do little or nothing to prevent global warming regardless of its cause.”
The Heritage Foundation published a “web memo” in December that said: “Growing scientific evidence casts doubt on whether global warming constitutes a threat, including the fact that 2008 is about to go into the books as a cooler year than 2007″. Scientists, including those at the UK Met Office say that the apparent cooling is down to natural changes and does not alter the long-term warming trend.
In its 2008 corporate citizenship report, published last year, ExxonMobil said it would cut funds to several groups that “divert attention” from the need to find new sources of clean energy.
The NCPA and Heritage Foundation are included among groups funded by ExxonMobil, according to details of its “2008 Worldwide Contributions and Community Investments” published recently.
Ward said: “ExxonMobil has been briefing journalists for three years that they were going to stop funding these groups. The reality is that they are still doing it. If the world’s largest oil company wants to fund climate change denial then it should be upfront about it, and not tell people it has stopped.”
In 2006, Ward, then at the Royal Society, wrote to ExxonMobil to challenge the company’s funding of such lobby groups. The move, revealed in the Guardian, prompted accusations of censorship and debate about whether experts should “police” the distribution of scientific information.
In an article on the Guardian website, Ward writes: “I have now written again to ExxonMobil to point out that these organisations publish misleading information about climate change on their websites, and to seek guidance on how to reconcile this fact with the pledge made by the company. I believe that the company should keep its promise by ending its financial support for lobby groups that mislead the public about climate change.”
ExxonMobil said it annually reviews and adjusts its contributions to policy research groups. A spokesman said: “Only ExxonMobil speaks for ExxonMobil and our position on climate change is clear. We have the same concerns as people everywhere, and that is how to provide the world with the energy it needs while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We take the issue of climate change seriously and the risks warrant action.”
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BP consortium wins Iraq oil deal
June 30th, 2009 |
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Concerns over terms of Rumaila field contract as war-torn state opens up rights to huge energy assets for first time in 40 years
A BP-led consortium has won the rights to develop Iraq’s largest oil field after an exhaustive tender process that opens the brittle state’s huge gas and oil assets to foreign exploration for the first time in almost 40 years.
BP and its Chinese partner CNPC clinched a deal to join an Iraqi state-owned enterprise to develop the Rumaila field in Iraq’s south – the largest of the country’s six giant oil sites.
Rumaila’s reserves are estimated at close to 18bn barrels. Under the terms of the 20-year contract, BP and CNPC have six years to increase production at Rumaila to a minimum output target of 2.85m barrels per day.
Iraq’s oil minister, Hussein al-Shahristani, said BP and CNPC had agreed to be paid $2 (£1.21) per barrel if they reached the target — significantly less than their asking price of $3.99 per barrel.
However, the company later claimed it was satisfied with the deal. Analysts said Rumaila was the most attractive of the eight contracts on offer in the auction.
BP’s offer was the only one accepted by the Iraqis. The other bids were rejected because they sought more profit than the oil ministry was prepared to give away.
Analysts said that many of the oil companies involved in the bidding believed they would struggle to break even under the terms on offer.
Samuel Ciszuk, from Global Insight, said the auction was a “flop”, blaming the Iraqis for overestimating how much oil companies were prepared to risk for a slice of its oil fields. “The Iraqis thought that interest would be so big that oil companies would come in no matter the price.”
It is not clear whether the Iraqis will lower their demands to secure takers for the seven remaining contracts in the first licensing round. Iraqi public opinion is very hostile to the idea of foreign companies profiting from its oil, limiting the government’s room for manoeuvre.
“We are happy to be awarded this contract and look forward to working with the Iraqi government in the future,” said Michael Daly, BP vice-president of exploration and new business development.
The much anticipated licensing round offers access to six giant and super-giant oil fields and two gas fields. Iraq has total oil reserves of 115bn barrels, placing it near the top of the global list of known verifiable undeveloped reserves. Just under 40% is up for grabs in the landmark auction.
The televised bidding, launched today at Baghdad’s al-Rasheed hotel, marked the first time since 1972 that foreign energy companies had been allowed to consolidate their influence in Iraq. Its oil reserves were nationalised seven years before Saddam Hussein seized power in 1979 and all foreign companies expelled.
Since the fall of Hussein six years ago, they have returned to make inroads, but have until now not been allowed to stake a claim for exploration rights.
Even now, the process is proving cumbersome, with disputes over the fixed price companies would receive clouding the bidding. All deals have to be joint ventures with state-owned companies, primarily the South Oil Company, which runs the vast fields in and around Basra, and the North Oil Company, which governs the Kurdish north of Iraq.
The process has attracted offers from 31 firms including European and American heavyweights Exxon Mobil and Shell. China is leading an Asian surge, with its privatised companies keen to seize on the state’s insatiable demand for old energy. Indian, South Korean and Indonesian representatives are also in town.
The hard bargain being driven by Iraq came amid a concession by prime minister Nouri al-Maliki that allowing joint private ventures into the heavily protected Iraqi oil industry would bail out the country’s desperately underfunded economy.
Maliki admitted Iraq needed the money to rebuild the economy after three decades of dictatorship, wars and sanctions, which have left a society deprived of most essential services – including oil infrastructure. “These contracts are needed for the reconstruction of Iraq,” he said. “They are for the benefit of Iraqis and the companies.”
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BP shuts alternative energy HQ
June 28th, 2009 |
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• ‘Beyond Petroleum’ boast in doubt as clean energy boss quits
• Renewables budget will be reduced by up to £550m this year
BP has shut down its alternative energy headquarters in London, accepted the resignation of its clean energy boss and imposed budget cuts in moves likely to be seen by environmental critics as further signs of the oil group moving “back to petroleum”.
But Tony Hayward, the group’s chief executive, said BP remained as committed as ever to exploring new energy sources and the non-oil division would benefit from the extra focus of being brought back in house.
BP Alternative Energy was given its own headquarters in County Hall opposite the Houses of Parliament two years ago and its managing director, Vivienne Cox, oversaw a small division of 80 staff concentrating on wind and solar power.
But the 49-year-old Cox – BP’s most senior female executive, who previously ran renewables as part of a larger gas and power division now dismantled by Hayward – is standing down tomorrow.
This comes alongside huge cuts in the alternative energy budget – from $1.4bn (£850m) last year to between $500m and $1bn this year, although spending is still roughly in line with original plans to invest $8bn by 2015.
The move back to BP’s corporate headquarters at St James’s Square in London’s West End made sense, particularly when the group was sitting on spare office space due to earlier cutbacks, said Hayward.
“We are going through a major restructuring and bringing the alternative energy business headquarters into the head office seems a good idea to me.
“It saves money and brings it closer to home … you could almost see it as a reinforcement [of our commitment to the business],” he said.
Cox was stepping down to spend more time with her children, Hayward added. “I know you would love to make a story out of all this,” he said, “but it’s quite hard work.”
The reason for the departure of Cox is variously said by industry insiders to be caused by frustration over the business being downgraded in importance or because she really does intend to stay at home more with her young children. Cox had already reduced her working week down to three days and had publicly admitted the difficulty of combining different roles.
She will be replaced by another woman, her former deputy Katrina Landis, but the moves will worry those campaigning for more women in business, especially as Linda Cook, Shell’s most senior female executive, has recently left her job too.
BP has gradually given up on plans to enter the UK wind industry and concentrated all its turbine activities on the US, where it can win tax breaks and get cheaper and easier access to land.
In April the company closed a range of solar power manufacturing plants in Spain and the US with the loss of 620 jobs and Hayward has publicly questioned whether solar would ever become competitive with fossil fuels, something that goes against the current thinking inside the renewables sector.
Hayward has also moved BP into more controversial oil areas, such as Canada’s tar sands, creating an impression that he has given up on the objectives of his predecessor, Lord Browne, to take the company “Beyond Petroleum”.
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Nationalised banks must go green
Environmental groups are suing the Treasury in an effort to ensure that RBS invests only in sustainable and ethical projects
Since the banking crisis last year, RBS has remained firmly in the public eye as the most controversial bank in the UK. Beyond the populist pillorying of Fred Goodwin’s undeserved pension bonanza and the most recent wave of outrage over the size of the new boss’s pay packet, lay more fundamental questions over the relationship between public money, climate change and the role of finance in fuelling the expansion of coal, oil and gas around the world. Because the Treasury didn’t provide any satisfactory answers when we asked them these questions, Platform, the World Development Movement and People & Planet are today filing an application for a judicial review over the lack of environmental and human rights considerations in the recapitalisation of RBS.
For some years, RBS has been targeted by NGOs and climate activists as being the UK high-street bank most associated with pumping billions into fossil fuel projects across the globe. Until it recently wised up to the need for a greener public image, it even went as far as promoting itself on the www.oilandgasbank.com website that it set up. Before the recapitalisation, it had financed companies that were not only disastrous in terms of spewing out countless tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, but that were also accused of human rights abuses – companies such as Lundin Petroleum, which is active in Sudan and listed by the Sudan Divestment Task Force in its “Top Five Highest Offenders”.
Before the recapitalisation, such instances of questionable finance were a scandal because they helped trash the climate and often human rights too. Since November last year, they are even more outrageous because RBS is now using public money to do it. In March the Guardian reported that in the six months following the initial bailout of the banks, RBS had been involved in financing loans to coal, oil and gas companies worth nearly £10bn (£9,941m) – over a quarter the amount the bank had received from taxpayers at that point. These companies included finance (or assistance in obtaining finance) to oil companies to expand their operations in controversial or politically sensitive regions (such as Tullow Oil in Uganda, and Cairn Energy in arctic Greenland) as well as to energy giant E.ON, which has received a great deal of bad press over its efforts to construct a new coal-fired plant in Kingsnorth, Kent.
The Green Book requires “central government to undertake a comprehensive and proportionate assessment of all new policies, programme and projects so as to best promote the public interest when using government resources”. We felt that using public money to finance new fossil fuel in the face of the threat of climate change flies in the face of public interest. In a letter that was sent in April from the Treasury to our legal council, we were told that “the environmental and human rights records of the individual banks were of no relevance to the decision and therefore the appraisal of the decision that was carried out did not consider the environmental or human rights records or policies of the individual banks”.
We think that if the increasingly climate-conscious UK taxpayer was aware of the type of projects that their money was financing, they would beg to differ. We are not suggesting that the banking bailout shouldn’t have happened. We are saying that now that it has happened, the government has a responsibility, especially given its posturing in the international political arena as being a “global leader on climate change”, to ensure that the public isn’t paying to expand further fossil fuel developments.
On 2 March, 2008, the Treasury established the framework for the management of public investment in recapitalised banks via UK Financial Investments. The framework sets out the basis for how the board of UKFI should manage government shares in the banks, but makes no reference to the need to consider social and environmental criteria, nor to support or even be consistent with other public policy objectives. This is what we are applying to challenge in court.
This isn’t a particularly radical demand, it’s just common sense. The cross-party environmental audit committee has already made the recommendation that the Treasury should “look at the benefits and practicalities of imposing some form of environmental criteria on the investment strategies of those banks in which the state had a controlling stake” while an early day motion tabled by Lib Dem shadow environment minister Martin Horwood proposes the same.
The Treasury has claimed it needs to take an “arm’s-length” approach to the management of RBS to maximise the financial return for the taxpayer. In reality, it already showed that it could get more “hands on” when it intervened over the issue of capping executive bonuses. We need to ask if the interests of the taxpayer would be better served by ensuring that RBS was not actively involved in making huge carbon emissions increases all over the world. This important decision should be made in a transparent and accountable fashion, rather than left to the whims of individuals in the banking sector, especially given the appalling mess that these individuals have already left us in.
With enough political will, RBS could even go further by not only committing to stop financing the “bad stuff” but also taking on an investment mandate of providing much-needed capital to Britain’s cash-starved renewables industry, providing microloans for households to install proper insulation and providing career development loans for the retraining of workers involved in carbon-intensive industries. There are numerous possibilities for transforming a beleaguered financial institution whose name has been dragged through the mud into the Royal Bank of Sustainability.