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Big Oil’s Hot Air Show On Global Warming
Jamie Court, Huffington Post
The CEOs of Big Oil gathered in Houston this week to proclaim that they finally get global warming and want to be part of the solution. The problem, of course, is when there’s so much money in black gold, it’s sure hard to go green.
The makeover is about image, not change in business practices.
Even Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson could not make it through the opening address without trashing the sustainability of alternative fuels and boasting about big oil’s beauty. Guess it’s hard to suspend your disbelief when your oil company is making $4.5 million per hour.
The biggest scam this week is the boasts of oil executives claiming how much they are spending on “alternative energy.” The estimates include the development of new fossil fuel sources and uses. It’s like the tobacco industry bragging about its spending on cures for cancer, while the total actually includes the development of new cigarettes.
“Aternative energy” spending is usually one lump figure on oil company reports. For instance, BP lists “Gas, Power and Renewables” in its last profit report and Chevron lumps together renewables, other “alternatives” and energy efficiency projects in public statements. A first step toward greening the industry is for all the companies to separate true renewables from all other research and development.
(14 Feb 2007)
Exxon Chief Cautions Against Rapid Action to Cut Carbon Emissions
Clifford Krauss and Jad Mouawad
…Mr. Tillerson’s tone, if not the substance of his remarks, at times broke with the rigid positions of his predecessor, Lee Raymond, who has long been considered a skeptic in the global warming debate.
“That’s Exxon-speak,” said Barbara Shook, an analyst for Energy Intelligence Group, a publishing and information services company. “It’s their own dialect, but if you look at where Exxon was one and a half years ago they may not have shifted their position 180 degrees, but they are moving.”
Mr. Tillerson’s remarks were his first formal and extensive comments since the publication of a report two weeks ago by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a leading panel of international scientists and reviewers, concluding that there is 90 percent certainty that human activity is decisive in changing the global climate.
Mr. Tillerson told reporters that he had not read the report but said, “My understanding is there’s not a clear 100 percent conclusion drawn.” He added: “Nobody can conclusively 100 percent know how this is going to play out. I think that’s important.”
Taken together, his statements suggested that Exxon was navigating between positions defending oil as an energy source and its core business, and showing sensitivity to growing public concerns about a warming climate.
…But at the end of speechmaking and answering questions, Mr. Tillerson expressed concern that policy makers could damage the world economy with precipitous environmental policies. He warned that future generations could be sorry for hasty policies taken today without more careful study.
“This is a centuries-long kind of problem, and we are going to learn more as we go,” he said.
(13 Feb 2007)
Climate scientists say that this is not a problem for which we have the leisure of centuries — 10 or 20 years is more like it. Tillerson should really read the IPCC report (or at least the salient points). -BA
Risks from oil nationalism “unacceptable”- Bodman
Chris Baltimore, Reuters
U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman on Wednesday gave a sobering view of tight energy supplies and reservoir access challenges around the world, and called on global leaders to act to remove the “unacceptable risk” to energy security.
Without naming them outright, Bodman took to task leaders in countries that have seized on their plentiful crude oil supplies as a way to further their national agendas.
“The current level of energy insecurity in the world poses an unacceptable risk to our economies and security,” [U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman] told a high-profile U.S. oil conference hosted by Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
…About two-thirds of the world’s oil and natural gas reserves are in countries that limit access for international oil companies to drill there, and state-owned oil companies own about half of the world’s proven oil reserves, Bodman said.
…Bodman called on world leaders to “embrace a new paradigm of energy security” which would focus on developing alternative energy sources and holding global stockpiles of crude oil which could be released in case of supply disruptions.
(14 Feb 2007)
