Comments on: Big oil made $600 billion under Bush, but invested bupkis in clean energy, Part 2: Details on BP, Chevron, Conoco Phillips, Shell and ExxonMobil

By: Inheritance Tax AdviceUK

Inheritance Tax AdviceUK — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 11:59:17 +0000

Inheritance help UK these days is a must because you really need to safeguard your assets and wealth for those you love when the time comes when you leave this mortal world.

By: Ronald

Ronald — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:50:35 +0000

K L Reddington,

Nonrenewable, exhaustible, depletable, polluting fossil fuels.

We’re not going to agree on a lot of things concerning fossil fuels I’m gathering from your posts. I’ll give you my look on fossil fuels.

They are nonrenewable, exhaustible and depletable. Getting fossil fuels from the earth is not production, it is extraction. You can’t pull the same oil out of the ground twice. If you pull in out today or tomorrow you can’t pull it out of the ground next week, next year or decade or generations from now.

Can we overspend on houses? Sure, we’re showing that. Can we overspend on education? Maybe, we’re showing that with many graduates with high debt, not enough of the needed jobs. Can we overspend on stimulus from the government? sure, we can just go deeper in debt and then not have those construction jobs we do now in the future.

We can also produce and consume to much fossil fuel: oil, natural gas and coal. That is when we are going to run up on problems like Peak Oil, when we’ve created our energy and economic systems around oil and the world runs out of it physically or is cut off from us in a political problem. There will also come a time when we have Peak Coal and Peak Natural Gas. Fossil Fuels are nonrenewable, exhaustible, depletable and polluting. (did I mention that).

I get where you are coming from, as a businessman worried and concerned about this next quarter and next years business. What happens though with political systems is they should look up from the needs of Business Immediate Gratification needs and consider the next 5, 10, 50 and the future of our planet. Then we come up with some different ideas and requirements of what should be done.

I think that fossil fuels are way undertaxed. I think that we should reduce property taxes by one half and make that up with fossil fuel taxes. I think we should eliminate the sales tax and instead of taxing sales, tax fossil fuels. Why? Because we are using up large percentages of fossil fuels in only a few short years when fossil fuel use should be spread out over decades or not used at all because of Global Warming. Because our houses, and other buildings and land will be here 50, 100, 500 years from now and our land will still be here a million years from now and fossil fuels will be long gone. It’s madness to extract fossil fuels at the rate we are and not consider what happens after they are depleted.

Fossil fuels can be said to be much to valuable to use as we are doing, as the bulk of electricity and motor vehicle energy. What we should be doing is if we use fossil fuels at all is use them only as a bridge between using all the renewable, nonexhaustable, nondepletable and less polluting sources of energy from efficiency, wind, solar, geothermal and nuclear.

We have a choice to build only fossil fuel plants now and use all the fossil fuels up and then build wind, solar, geothermal after the fossil fuels are gone and not have those easily storage fossil fuels to use as bridge energy. Or we can build the renewable energy plants now as the bulk energy and use fossil fuels only when needed as bridge energy like we should because fossil fuels may run out some day.

It is just not right for anybody to say we haven’t allowed drilling in North America, there has been more than half a million holes drilled for fossil fuels on this continent. What we should be doing is doing it smarter. Instead of a rush to use up all the fossil fuels, we should recognize our limitations, because nature with Global Warming and Peak Oil surely will let us know what they are.

By: K L Reddington

K L Reddington — Fri, 29 May 2009 17:45:14 +0000

GE Completes Enron Wind Acquisition; Launches GE Wind Energy

Atlanta, Georgia, May 10, 2002 –

GE Power Systems today officially entered the wind power industry, announcing that its acquisition of certain assets of Enron Wind Corp. has been completed. The new GE business, GE Wind Energy (www.gewindenergy.com), will be headed by Steven Zwolinski, who has been serving as general manager of GE Global Hydro.

Enron was big oil. Of course they really were the big American player in developing Wind/electric power. Appparently they didn’t make enough profits.

By: James Newberry

James Newberry — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:59:25 +0000

The financial, and therefore political, power of these anglo/american cartels is astounding. Their crimes, and political capture of world governance, are well documented. If any next billion tons of carbon dioxide could throw the global warming switch of abrupt climate change due to permafrost and methane hydrate feedbacks resulting from melting a trillion tons of frozen carbon, what is the political solution to governance for sustainability and peace?

By: Rick Covert

Rick Covert — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:25:08 +0000

I have a major beef with Chevron with respect to renewables. When GM killed its EV-1 electric car program it also sold its 50% share in the battery company Ovonics to Texaco which was then bought by Chevron. Chevron renamed the company to Cobasys. Ovonics batteries extended the range from 60 miles on its lead-acid batteries to a range of 90 to 120 miles. Chevron then proceeded to restrict the use of its batteries only to those who could purchase in large volume, like GM, but who would not also use the batteries to power the car over 50% of the car’s traveling range. This was a clear shot at electric cars but not to hybrids which still use gasoline albeit more efficiently. Stan Ovshinsky, Ovonics cofounder along with his late wife Iris, stated in an interview in the Economist, “I think we at ECD we made a mistake of having a joint venture with an oil company, frankly speaking. And I think it’s not a good idea to go into business with somebody whose strategies would put you out of business, rather than building the business.”

Sad but true. When the modern aire of the legacy of Thomas Edison calls the relationship what it is you have to wonder what could the possibilities for those batteries would have been if Ovonics could have been unshackled from this suffocating business alliance.

By: FridrihLop

FridrihLop — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:44:39 +0000

Good article, the advertisment is sold?

By: Richard Pauli

Richard Pauli — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:17:17 +0000

OK. That does it.

It is time for a policy that optimizes survival while respecting the science. Adapt and mitigate.

The ONLY free use of carbon fuel should be for the direct manufacture and deployment of green energy systems – ALL other carbon fuel uses should be heavily taxed, capped and restricted.

Anything else is just folly. Oil companies are just moving deck chairs on the Titanic.

By: SecularAnimist

SecularAnimist — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:27:04 +0000

K L Reddington wrote: "If we want to lower crude prices, we will have less battles against drilling in North America." We don't want to lower crude prices. We want the price of oil, and coal, and natural gas to go up, to internalize the full cost of the environmental damage that they cause, and force them to compete in the market on a level playing field with clean, renewable sources of energy. We want to burn LESS oil, not drill for more of it. We want offshore wind turbines, not offshore oil drilling rigs. Besides which, the oil corporations already have vast leases on public lands where they are already permitted to drill, and they aren't doing it. Why should they? What incentive do the oil corporations have to lower the price of their product by putting more of it on the market?

By: K L Reddington

K L Reddington — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:18:12 +0000

Major oil companies.(vertically integrated) Are doing fair in terms of profits as a percent of sales. Losing money is still bad. Profit is what they are in business to attain. People that do not work in industry are supported by profits earned in industry. Major Oil companies are always a source of taxatio. Punitive taxation is not a new concept if the commoners can be stirred up.
There is a little more comment on BP in the article. 20 years ago, BP acquired Sohio. 10 years ago, they acquired Amoco Production. Since 2000 Atlantic richfield has been known as BP west coast Products. Yes they are cyclical companies and many of the mergers were required to survive low oil profits.
I was in Mobils office in New Orleans and we discussed an offshore acreage bit. Offshore leases are paid for before drilling starts and production comes in. It may be 7 years before they find out if they paid too much and found no oil or if they will make money. It is common to spend 3 billion which is not yet tax deductible 5-10 years before revenues exceed expenditure. There is very little opportunity in the energy industry to go to a bank and borrow money. Russia for example could remove Exxon from Sakhalin Island tomorrow. Venezuela took a lot of production from oil companies recently. It is high risk.
It is an old business rule that high investment risks demand high returns. As capitialism still shows, we have many industries losing billions and we see derogatory comments on those that show profits in good years.
If we want to lower crude prices, we will have less battles against drilling in North America.