Tag: Big Oil

Big Oil just realized Electric Car demand is rising

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❝ The world’s biggest oil producers are starting to take electric vehicles seriously as a long-term threat.

OPEC quintupled its forecast for sales of plug-in EVs, and oil producers from Exxon Mobil Corp. to BP Plc also revised up their outlooks in the past year, according to a study by Bloomberg New Energy Finance released on Friday. The London-based researcher expects those cars to reduce oil demand 8 million barrels by 2040, more than the current combined production of Iran and Iraq.

❝ Growing popularity of EVs increases the risk that oil demand will stagnate in the decades ahead, raising questions about the more than $700 billion a year that’s flowing into fossil-fuel industries. While the oil producers’ outlook isn’t nearly as aggressive as BNEF’s, the numbers indicate an acceleration in the number of EVs likely to be in the global fleet…

❝ BNEF expects electric cars to outsell gasoline and diesel models by 2040, reflecting a rapid decline in the cost of lithium-ion battery units that store power for the vehicles. It expects 530 million plug-in cars on the road by 2040, a third of worldwide total number of cars.

❝ Long-term growth depends on a wide range of factors, including policy decisions by governments seeking to tackle air pollution to the cost of the lithium-ion batteries that account for about a third of the cost of each one.

Yet even as oil majors lift their outlook, they remain much less optimistic than the automakers. The world’s top automakers have a combined plan to sell 6 million EVs a year by 2025, rising to 8 million in 2030, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

2030 or 2040 might be doable for me. Looking forward to a greener more sensible world – and hopefully education and understanding keep up.

The Electric-Car Boom Is So Real One Global Oil Company Says Oil Consumption Will Peak In The 2030s

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❝ Electric cars are coming fast — and that’s not just the opinion of carmakers anymore. Total SA, one of the world’s biggest oil producers, is now saying EVs may constitute almost a third of new-car sales by the end of the next decade.

❝ The surge in battery powered vehicles will cause demand for oil-based fuels to peak in the 2030s, Total Chief Energy Economist Joel Couse said at Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s conference in New York on Tuesday. EVs will make up 15 percent to 30 percent of new vehicles by 2030, after which fuel “demand will flatten out,” Couse said. “Maybe even decline.”

Couse’s projection for electric cars is the highest yet by a major oil company and exceeds BNEF’s own forecast, said Colin McKerracher, head of advanced transport analysis at Bloomberg New Energy Finance…

❝ Electric cars are beginning to compete with gasoline models on both price and performance. The most expensive part of an electric car is the battery, which can make up half the total cost, according to BNEF. The first electric cars to be competitive on price have been in the luxury class, led by Tesla Inc.’s Model S, which is now the best-selling large luxury car in the U.S.

But battery prices are dropping by about 20 percent a year, and automakers have been spending billions to electrify their fleets. Volkswagen AG is targeting 25 percent of its sales to be electric by 2025. Toyota Motor Corp. plans to phase out fossil fuels altogether by 2050.

Not so incidentally, Total SA is the seventh largest oil company in the world. Of course, none of this means anything to the dork in the White House or Congressional Republicans. They will continue pimping for Big Oil until the last fossil fuel dollar drips into their bank accounts.

Big Oil has destroyed so much of Louisiana that members of both parties are demanding justice

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Click to enlarge — Bloomberg/Getty Images

❝ The oil industry has left a big footprint along the Gulf Coast, where a Delaware-sized stretch of Louisiana has disappeared.

But few politicians would blame Big Oil for ecosystem abuse in a state where the industry employs up to 300,000 people and injects $73 billion into the economy.

Until now.

❝ Following the lead of Gov. John Bel Edwards, Louisiana political orthodoxy is being turned upside-down as prominent leaders of both parties join lawsuits seeking billions of dollars for environmental improvement projects…

❝ Louisiana remains the nation’s second-largest crude oil producer and oil refiner after Texas, but the industry has been on the defensive since Edwards, a 49-year-old lawyer and Democrat, ended eight years of Republican leadership last November.

Publicly, he joined a campaign by local governments suing to hold the industry at least partly responsible for Louisiana’s loss of 1,900 square miles of coast since the 1930s. Privately, he pushed for a pre-trial settlement to resolve all their claims…

He was soon seconded by New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, whose family of Louisiana Democrats long supported Big Oil. Landrieu accused former state leaders of allowing the industry to cripple “in a generation or two what Mother Nature built in 7,000 years,” and said the damage has spread “through the marsh like an infection.

In July, Vermilion Parish, deep in Louisiana’s “Oil Patch,” became the fourth local government to file claims against Exxon, Shell, Chevron and dozens of other corporations. The agency overseeing flood protection for New Orleans also is suing. Republicans have joined in, from GOP-led parishes to Attorney General Jeff Landry…

❝ What’s gone is gone, but the politicians hope to keep hundreds of other square miles from disappearing. They’re envisioning huge projects to divert sediment flows from the Mississippi River and build up marsh flats, barrier islands, ridges and swamp forests.

It would cost between $50 billion and $100 billion, and Louisiana doesn’t expect to have more than $25 billion to spend.

Suing oil companies “is probably the only new potential source of revenue,” said Mark Davis, who directs Tulane University’s Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy. “Before you tax anybody, you’re going to be required, I think, to show that you’ve tried every other alternative. Is there anybody who owes dollars that have not been collected for this purpose?”

The answer to that question in Louisiana – and lots of other states – starts with a list of corporations undertaxed or even exempt from paying for their fair share of public accountability.

The last year I lived in Louisiana, my personal income tax bill was higher than that of Dow Chemical Corporation. And they owned a lot of Louisiana. Cripes, they even owned the state’s telephone system, then.

Chamber of Commerce = right-wing extremists with the biggest budget in the USA

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❝ In 1912, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was created at the behest of President William Howard Taft as a business counterweight to the growing labor movement.

To say it was a success is an understatement. While organized labor has languished, the Chamber has become the single largest lobbying organization in the country. According to Open Secrets, a site that tracks political lobbying and spending, during the past 18 years the Chamber has spent three times more than any other organization on behalf of industry – $1.2 billion versus $351 million by the No. 2 lobbying group, the National Association of Realtors.

❝ This is of great interest in the context of the Chamber’s opposition to the new fiduciary rules for retirement accounts, requiring brokers to put savers’ interests ahead of their own. Opposing the fiduciary standard may be pro-Wall Street, but it’s anti-small business.

So I decided to do a bit of digging to find out where the Chamber’s advocacy pits it against broader business interests. What I found was that the Chamber is at odds with the interests of some, if not most, of its membership in three other areas: climate change, minimum wages and tobacco.

❝ Examination of other positions leads to the conclusion that the Chamber isn’t so much an advocate for industry as much as it is a conservative think tank.

❝ On climate change, consider that 94 percent of Chamber campaign contributions went to candidates who were climate-change deniers…

Not surprisingly, this has provoked a considerable backlash. In 2009, Apple, the world’s largest company by market value, left the Chamber over its position on climate change. Yahoo left for the same reason in 2011. Athletic apparel powerhouse Nike resigned from the Chamber’s board, though it remained a member in order to press the organization to alter its positions. More recently, Nike joined with 100 other companies to support President Barack Obama’s proposed regulations on carbon emissions…

❝ Ignoring those companies opposed to the Chamber’s stand on climate change is easy. Why? Money, of course. A third of the Chamber’s revenue comes from just 19 companies, many of them in the energy industry.

❝ The case of pharmacy giant CVS Health is also instructive. In 2014, it became the first big drug-store chain to remove cigarettes and other tobacco products from its stores — the reasoning being that it’s in a business related to health care. The following year, after reports that the Chamber was working around the world to fight antismoking measures, CVS decided to drop its membership.

❝ Another schism between the Chamber and most of its membership is over the minimum wage. The Washington Post reported that leaked documents from Republican pollster Frank Luntz showed that 80 percent of business owners supported raising the pay floor…

The Chamber is opposed to a higher minimum wage…

When an organization chartered to represent nation-wide interests deliberately chooses to ignore the needs and wants of the whole class premised in that charter it deserves to be dissolved.

Should that include Congress as well as the Chamber of Commerce?

Thanks to my favorite Recovering Republican.

Big Oil must grudgingly make way for Big Solar

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❝Saving the world isn’t going to be cheap. If you sell oil, coal or old-fashioned cars, that threatens disaster. For makers of stuff like solar panels, high-tech home insulation, and efficient lighting, it’s a potential miracle.

That’s the bottom line from this weekend’s climate deal in Paris, which commits 195 countries to reducing pollution in order to head off dangerous climate change.

Global governments and companies are counting the costs and benefits from the agreement, which calls for wholesale transformations of energy, transportation, and dozens of other lines of business. Fossil-fuel producers and countries that depend on them face massive, costly disruption. Players in up-and-coming industries like renewable power and energy efficiency are looking at an unprecedented opportunity.

❝The Paris pact, which also calls for a review of ever-tightening pledges every five years, is the most significant global climate agreement ever, outstripping the 1997 Kyoto Accord in its scope and ambition…The deal will likely accelerate investments in technologies like renewable energy and electric vehicles — especially if more countries join the European Union and parts of North America in imposing a price or tax on carbon. The United Nations estimates upward of $1 trillion a year in spending is required to de-carbonize the global economy and prevent temperature rises scientists say could flood coastal cities, disrupt agriculture, and destroy ecosystems.

❝That means companies with business models threatened by a low-carbon world need to re-focus, and fast, said Lyndon Rive, CEO of SolarCity Corp., a U.S. provider of home-solar systems…Rive said on the sidelines of the Paris summit, “you’re going to defend that job because that’s your livelihood. But your livelihood is going to be destroyed.”

Executives from more traditional companies have a similar, if less stark, view. Peter Terium, CEO of German utility RWE AG, said companies like his would have to learn from the successive transformations of International Business Machines to stay relevant in a new energy system. RWE on Friday approved a plan to split into two companies, one focused on renewables and grids and the other managing declining conventional assets.

❝That doesn’t mean Big Oil will be closing up shop anytime soon. According to a relatively optimistic forecast of emissions cuts by the International Energy Agency, fossil fuels will still account for about 75 percent of energy demand in 2030, with coal hitting a plateau, oil growing slightly and natural gas surging…

❝Energy investment, though, will increasingly shift toward green power. Under another IEA scenario, renewables will attract about 59 percent of capital in the power sector over the next decade, rising to about two-thirds from 2026 to 2040. France’s Total, for example, is building out its solar business, shifting investment to gas, and expanding energy-efficiency services to cope.

Executives at companies that have moved early to get themselves ready for a lower-carbon world argue there’s nothing new about the energy transition except perhaps its scale; after all, changing technologies have been obliterating business models since at least the invention of the wheel.

“Really high-carbon industries have had their day,” said Steve Howard, Chief Sustainability Officer at furniture retailer Ikea. “If they can adapt and reinvent themselves, fantastic! If they can’t, maybe some will just return cash to shareholders and slowly close up shop.”

One of the advantages of a globalized economy is that progressive tech – if a firm is capable of moving into global competition, planetwide distribution and sales – becomes widely accepted, faster and easier. Backwards portions of any industry will no doubt continue to drag their feet. Even more backwards politicians – the Republican Party and other wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Koch Bros. – will do their damndest to hold back time, deny any progress offered by science and technology. But, a global market offers the opportunity of scale sooner to bona fide enterprise. A global market doesn’t grow itself over time on the path of selling for cheap and dirty.

It would be great if our political infrastructure still believed sufficiently in American talent for innovation and invention to help out. Poisonally, I think too many of our politicians are owned by the two most reactionary wings of capitalism: the types who consume Earth’s resources regardless of the result and those who unblushingly are out to make a quick buck, especially with runaway shops. The first will rely on political flunkies to defend their diminishing global role. The second are already running hard to be importers instead of efficient, competitive manufacturers.

Do Nothing-Congress did all it could to protect Big Oil

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A new report by Oil Change International…demonstrates the huge and growing amount of subsidies going to the fossil fuel industry in the U.S. every year. In 2013, the U.S. federal and state governments gave away $21.6 billion in subsidies for oil, gas, and coal exploration and production.

The value of fossil fuel exploration and production subsidies from the federal government have increased by 45 percent since President Obama took office in 2009 – from $12.7 billion to a current total of $18.5 billion – a side effect of his Administration’s “All of the Above” energy policy that promotes the U.S. oil and gas boom and amounts to nothing less than climate denial.

President Obama has repeatedly tried to repeal some of the most egregious of these subsidies, but these attempts have been blocked by a U.S. Congress that has been bought out by campaign finance and lobbying expenditures from the fossil fuel industry.

In addition to exploration and production subsidies to oil, gas, and coal companies, the U.S. government also provides billions of dollars of additional support to the fossil fuel industry to lower the cost of fossil fuels to consumers, finance fossil fuel projects overseas, and to protect U.S. oil interests abroad with the military.

Finally, while the fossil fuel industry enjoys record profits, U.S, taxpayers will pay the bill for external health and environmental costs from local pollution and climate change impacts.

Big Oil is an equal-opportunity purchaser of political loyalty. It doesn’t matter which of the two TweedleDee or TweedleDumber parties you belong to. Show the least inclination to favor fossil fuel anything and you will be awash in campaign contributions, “independent” supporters and PACs.

It’s the American Way.

Thanks, Mike

Green jobs employ more Canadians than oil sands jobs

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Canada’s green energy sector has grown so quickly and has become such an important part of the economy that it now employs more people than the oil sands.

About $25-billion has been invested in Canada’s clean-energy sector in the past five years, and employment is up 37 per cent, according to a new report from climate think tank Clean Energy Canada to be released Tuesday. That means the 23,700 people who work in green energy organizations outnumber the 22,340 whose work relates to the oil sands, the report says.

“Clean energy has moved from being a small niche or boutique industry to really big business in Canada,” said Merran Smith, director of Clean Energy Canada. The investment it has gleaned since 2009 is roughly the same as has been pumped into agriculture, fishing and forestry combined, she said. The industry will continue to show huge growth potential, beyond most other business sectors, she added.

While investment has boomed, the energy-generating capacity of wind, solar, run-of-river hydro and biomass plants has expanded by 93 per cent since 2009, the report says…

Not a priority, however, for the Conservatives running the Federal government. Big Oil still rules.

Not only does the oil industry still get more substantial subsidies, she said, it also eats up a good deal of the country’s diplomatic relations efforts – through the lobbying for the Keystone XL pipeline, for example…

As for the provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan in particular should follow Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia in getting into the renewable-energy game, Ms. Smith said. Still, the necessity for this shift is beginning to gain some traction, she said, noting that Alberta Finance Minister Robin Campbell said last week that the province has to “get off the oil train…”

The Clean Energy Canada report notes that much of the investment for Canada’s clean-tech expansion currently comes outside the country. Of the five largest investors since 2009, just one, Manulife Financial Corp., is Canadian. Two Japanese companies are in that top-five list, along with two German banking groups.

“The fact that foreign investors are coming to Canada to invest in our clean energy, tells us that we have a fantastic resource,” Ms. Smith said. “We need Bay Street to wake up and recognize this is where the puck is going.”

Gotta love Canadian sports metaphors. In a nation where hockey rules, the puck stops here is a legit phrase.

U.S. foreign policy ≠ China foreign policy

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The biggest economic news of the year came almost without notice: China has overtaken the United States as the world’s largest economy, according to the scorekeepers at the International Monetary Fund. And, while China’s geopolitical status is rising rapidly, alongside its economic might, the US continues to squander its global leadership, owing to the unchecked greed of its political and economic elites and the self-made trap of perpetual war in the Middle East…

With rising economic power has come growing geopolitical clout. Chinese leaders are feted around the world. Many European countries are looking to China as the key to stronger domestic growth. African leaders view China as their countries’ new indispensable growth partner, particularly in infrastructure and business development.

Similarly, economic strategists and business leaders in Latin America now look to China at least as much as they look to the US. China and Japan seem to be taking steps toward better relations, after a period of high tensions. Even Russia has recently “tilted” toward China, establishing stronger connections on many fronts, including energy and transport.

Like the US after World War II, China is putting real money on the table – a lot of it – to build strong economic and infrastructure links with countries around the world. This will enable other countries to boost their own growth, while cementing China’s global economic and geopolitical leadership.

Like the US after WW2, China has suffered no injury to productive capacity, as well.

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New Mexico is Ground Zero for methane contaminating our air

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One small “hot spot” in the U.S. Southwest is responsible for producing the largest concentration of the greenhouse gas methane seen over the United States – more than triple the standard ground-based estimate — according to a new study of satellite data by scientists at NASA and the University of Michigan…

In each of the seven years studied from 2003-2009, the area released about 0.59 million metric tons of methane into the atmosphere. This is almost 3.5 times the estimate for the same area in the European Union’s widely used Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research.

…Researchers used observations made by the European Space Agency’s…SCIAMACHY instrument. SCIAMACHY measured greenhouse gases from 2002 to 2012. The atmospheric hot spot persisted throughout the study period. A ground station…operated by…Los Alamos National Laboratory, provided independent validation of the measurement…

Research scientist Christian Frankenberg of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, first noticed the Four Corners signal years ago in SCIAMACHY data…

The study’s lead author, Eric Kort of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, noted the study period predates the widespread use of hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, near the hot spot. This indicates the methane emissions should not be attributed to fracking but instead to leaks in natural gas production and processing equipment in New Mexico’s San Juan Basin, which is the most active coalbed methane production area in the country.

“The results are indicative that emissions from established fossil fuel harvesting techniques are greater than inventoried,” Kort said. “There’s been so much attention on high-volume hydraulic fracturing, but we need to consider the industry as a whole…”

Phew! Where do we start?

The study includes time spent with Governor Bill the Democrat and Governor Susana the Republican. Both played kissy-kissy with our oil and gas industry. Sure, different levels of public blather; but, when push comes to shove, neither did a damned thing about oversight or regulation.

We shouldn’t be waiting for a Euro satellite or the coneheads up on the Hill to be telling us the air we breathe is being polluted. Everyone in the Four Corners knows it. Polluters, whether from the PNM power plants to gas and oil producers know it. They don’t care. And We The People – haven’t much of any elected officials really interested in acting on our behalf.

What could we have done? What can we do, now? How about a Green Party that actually tries to build political power instead of trotting out Ralph Nader every four years to tell us we’re screwed? Anyone concerned about quality of life already knows that. The rest of the population wallows in ignorance and ain’t reading Mother Jones. Most of our elected officials only respond to money and vested interests forking it over.

It’s time to stop the electoral posturing, put an end to political masturbation. That only perpetuates the absolute failure of any Green Party in the GOUSA. Our sister and brothers around the world enjoy our dissertations – and chuckle at how useless American environmentalists are at getting things done.

Aside from the Walt Disney theory of history which relies on electing a hero at the top – proven false most recently by the flop named Obama – reliance on the purportedly liberal wing of the two political parties we think is all we’re allowed is the broader example of being co-opted. Democrats respond to enviro fervor by saying, “Right on, y’all — vote for us and we’ll carry your banner to victory!” And then do nothing. Today’s Republicans do nothing by definition.

Nope. With continued polarization in this country – even if it’s based on the ignorance of perception – small victories, grassroots strength where possible, can provide the political power to make an independent difference. A Progressive swing vote in a gridlocked state legislature means a helluva lot more than buying TV time for this year’s self-chosen mellowed-out 60’s radical.

There are any number of city councils, state legislatures and eventually the bowels of Congress where program-based electoral campaigns can win the small victories which enable ecology gadflies to ally with other minorities to make a difference in how this state and this nation are run. And that includes the basic responsibility for oversight and regulation that restores our environment for future generations.