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Re: Exon calls for Carbon tax
They do not want the cap/trade system.
They do not want administrative costs of another fee/tax system.
They will support collecting taxes at the pump by the consumer.
The other things, e.g. whether they "believe in" global warming/caused by humans, or other issues, is lower priority.
They are in business to make money, by avoiding costs, or whatever they think is the best way to do that. They will say or do practically anything to accomplish that. -
Re: Exon calls for Carbon tax
Oil is the most political of commodities. Has been for many decades. The climate-change/carbon-tax/global-warming/fossil-fuel debate is just the latest chapter. Don't look to Exxon to make any dramatic corporate strategy changes or makeovers as a result of this. Everyone has seen what a PR disaster Sir John Browne's "Beyond Petroleum" strategy has become.Originally posted by Mega View Post
Exxon won't make the same mistake. It's an oil company; period. Makes something for which there appears to be a fairly reliable demand, and makes no apologies for that. If the governments of the world decide oil is "bad" for us, and restrict its use or tax it some form, Exxon has decided it's better to use the tobacco company example and accept the inevitable. You'll note that the tobacco companies remain among the most wildly profitable businesses on the face of the earth. And governments in developed countries have become so addicted to the tax revenues from cigarettes they cannot afford to put the companies out of business. Whatever way governments find to raise the price of carbon based fuels, you can bet it will restrict the supply more than the demand.Comment
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Re: Exon calls for Carbon tax
good find mega
as i said
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...33297#poststop
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...5880#post55880
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...0924#post60924Comment
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Re: Exon calls for Carbon tax
Originally posted by bill View Post- If Exxon [or any of the other oil majors] decides to remake themselves as a nuclear energy company, they have an excellent probability of losing their shareholders shirts [that has been the past experience with their foolish efforts to "diversify" their businesses, and Exxon understands that better than BP].
- I find a carbon tax the least objectionable policy remedy if the government feels compelled to do something about Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth. However, I would think Obama now has his hands full dealing with something of more immediate concern to his constituents than some distant fiery end to the planet, so we will have to be patient and see how durable the carbon tax priority turns out to be.
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Re: Exon calls for Carbon tax
I like this statement but I'm not sure I'm in agreement. I've always thought of gold as the most political of all commodities. History is certainly on the side of gold. Oil has had a nice run but it will exit the political stage by the end of the century and gold may still be making a defiant stand.Originally posted by GRG55 View Post
BP, one of the worst partners I've experienced in my business life. They're Beyond Petroleum strategy was a tactic. Had it been a strategy it would have worked. BP...Bad Partner.Everyone has seen what a PR disaster Sir John Browne's "Beyond Petroleum" strategy has become.
Like Walmart, this is a well run company and like Walmart, their style leaves a lot to be desired.Exxon won't make the same mistake. It's an oil company; period. Makes something for which there appears to be a fairly reliable demand, and makes no apologies for that. If the governments of the world decide oil is "bad" for us, and restrict its use or tax it some form, Exxon has decided it's better to use the tobacco company example and accept the inevitable.
We're planning on that. Oil bad, solar good. We can set up your bunker with never ending solar power...and government subsidies. Is silicon the most political commodity? It might be but we'll have to trim our timeline to 10-12 years.Whatever way governments find to raise the price of carbon based fuels, you can bet it will restrict the supply more than the demand.Comment
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Re: Exon calls for Carbon tax
Originally posted by santafe2 View Post
BP is good in pulling articles they don't like
Hookers, spies, cases full of dollars...how BP spent £45m to win 'Wild East' oil rights
By GLEN OWEN - More by this author » Last updated at 22:48pm on 12th May 2007
Comments (2)
BP executives working for Lord Browne spent millions of pounds on champagne-fuelled sex parties to help secure lucrative international oil contracts.
The company also worked with MI6 to help bring about changes in foreign governments, according to an astonishing account of life inside the oil giant.
Les Abrahams, who led BP's successful bid for a multi-million-pound deal with one of the former Soviet republics, today claims that Browne - who was forced to resign as chief executive last month after the collapse of legal proceedings against The Mail on Sunday - presided over an "anything goes" regime of sexual licence, spying and financial sweeteners.
Scroll down for more...
http://www.nlpwessex.org/docs/mailmi...7htmlexmht.htm
http://www.blacklistednews.com/view.asp?ID=3195
And controlling fuel is important for some politicians
In the mid-1970’s Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a protégé of the Rockefeller family and of its institutions stated, "Control the oil and you control entire nations; control the food and you control the people."
http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintAr...articleId=6407Comment
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Re: Exon calls for Carbon tax
I suppose the difference is that I've never viewed gold as a commodity. Over several decades of private investing, much of it in energy and other commodities because that is where my professional knowledge lies, I never owned any gold until 2003. That probably puts me in the gold-as-a-currency-camp?Originally posted by santafe2 View Post
I don't understand what you mean by the last sentence [timeline comment]? Do you mean that silicon has the potential to become the most political commodity in 10-12 years as oil fades? Or it will only be a political commodity for 10-12 years [surely there is no shortage of the raw materials in the earth's crust to make usable grade silicon, is there?]Originally posted by santafe2 View PostComment
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Re: Exon calls for Carbon tax
Originally posted by GRG55 View Post
Na ,,,I don’t see Exxon as a alternative energy developer to satisfy public image, however don’t rule out the purchase of a established fleet of nuclear plants.
Exxon obviously sees share holder value in promoting carbon tax and they will take advantage of such opportunity.
Exxon change in face tells me policy of Obama and team will be utilizing carbon tax as one part of their many schemes to generate new fees keeping government and partners in the money.
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Re: Exon calls for Carbon tax
rare earth, key to alt energyOriginally posted by GRG55 View Post
http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1231261620.php
Posted Tuesday, 6 January 2009 |
JL: There’s another rare earth metal that’s critically important to our society—neodymium. In 1984, General Motors and Sumitomo developed the neodymium iron boron alloy for permanent magnets, which is the basis of all modern electric motors because it allows you to make a very small electric motor with the highest possible power density. Neodymium total world production is less than 20,000 tons. That may sound like a lot to you, but it’s tiny. And the fact is it’s recently been projected that a single wind turbine electric generator producing 1 megawatt of electricity requires one ton of neodymium.
TGR: One ton?
JL: One ton. Now the U.S. installed capacity for electric power production is 1,000 gigawatts, which is 1 million megawatts. So, to replace America’s capacity with wind would require 1 million tons of neodymium. At current world production, that would take around 50 years—if there were no other uses for neodymium. Clearly this isn’t going to happen.
We can produce only so much of any material in a given year. Last year marked the highest production of base metals in history. We produced 39 million tons of aluminum, 16 million tons of copper and 1.3 billion tons of steel. Unfortunately, there’s not much in the way of by-products from iron, but copper and aluminum production account for almost all of the minor metals—gallium, molybdenum, rhenium, selenium and tellurium. If the world economy declines and we don’t reach those peaks again, then we’ve already peaked in the production of those metals. The uses are mainly dissipative. We lose them. It becomes uneconomical to recover them by recycling, so we’re going to have to get along in a world where we use less, which means any industry planning on increasing production based on those metals is in big trouble. One of them clearly is solar.Comment
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Re: Exon calls for Carbon tax
Never is a long time, so who knows what Exxon will do in time. But anything they may purchase in the foreseeable future is more likely to be petroleum assets similar to what they already own, acquired from distressed sellers [and there is no shortage of those in the resource and energy space at the moment]. Buying nuclear plants and becoming a power utility is quite a change for an integrated petroleum company, and not one I would welcome if I was an Exxon shareholder.Originally posted by bill View Post
I can see merit in your argument about carbon taxes as a new form of fees, especially given the government will be suffering dramatic declines in most other sources of tax revenue due to the depression. However, I wonder if the political window of opportunity to impose climate change related taxes has already passed? Of course they could also wrap the tax up in a conservation & energy security "blanket" with some sort of allocation of the revenues to alt-energy subsidies, in order to sell it to the public. Easier to add taxes onto gasoline and heating oil now, than it would have been six months ago. It will be interesting to see how the Obama Administration stick handles this one.
P.S. You'll love this one bill...not surprisingly, and completely consistent with other studies I have read, including one several years ago from the European power utilities transmission organization, when they need it most [winter cold spells and summer heat waves] power from wind turbines is not available. Improvements in ways to store mass quantities of electricity are needed. Either that, or there has to be double investment, with each megawatt of wind sourced energy backed up in some portion by other alternatives, that can be brought online quickly [nat gas turbines, anyone?
]
Wind energy supply dips during cold snap
Britain's wind farms have stopped working during the cold snap due to lack of wind, it has emerged, as scientists claimed half the world's energy could soon be from renewables.
By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:10AM GMT 10 Jan 2009
The Met Office said there has been an unusually long period of high pressure across the UK for the last couple of weeks, causing the cold snap and very little wind.
Since Boxing Day much of the country has suffered sub-zero conditions with frozen rivers and lakes and even the sea in the south of England, at Sandbanks in Dorset. In the last few days temperatures in southern England plunged as low as 17.6F (-8C). However the weather is expected to warm up over the weekend, with wind speeds also picking up.
But sources in the energy industry say that the lack of wind has caused the country's wind farms to grind to a halt when more electricity than ever is needed for heating, forcing the grid to rely on back up from fossil fuels or other renewable energy sources.
In the long term, experts fear that the intermittent nature of wind will force the UK to rely on insecure energy supplies, for example gas from Russia, and are calling for a greater energy mix including controversial nuclear and coal-fired power stations.
The continuing row between Russia and the Ukraine over gas supplies mean that Moscow cut supplies to the rest of Europe, sparking shortages that have hit 18 countries so far.
John Constable, research director at the Renewable Energy Foundation, said wind has been generating at a sixth of total capacity for much of the last couple of weeks, dropping to almost zero at times.
"This shows that wind provides very little firm, reliable capacity," he said. "At times of high demand in cold weather there is a tendency for there to be no wind."
Power generator E.On said wind energy supplies have dipped 60 per cent in the last couple of weeks, when compared to the last fortnight in December .
A spokesman said: “As a country we need to keep the lights on, reduce our environmental impact, and do that in the most affordable way for our customers. Sadly there is no single miracle cure to do that.
“Renewables, such as wind, have a big part to play now and in the future but in order to guarantee a secure electricity supply it’s clear we need a mix of power stations including cleaner coal, new nuclear and gas.”
Europe has pledged to source 20 per cent of energy from renewable sources by 2020. Dr Constable said the current crisis in European gas supplies highlighted the danger of relying on an energy supply that needs to be backed up with other sources and called for a mix of alternatives.
"At the moment it is not a problem because we have supplies of oil and gas from the North Sea but when we go 11 years down the line when we have 20 per cent from renewables and we have a similar weather pattern then we have a problem."
The Met Office said high pressure coming in from the east can cause long periods of cold or heat waves. For wind there is a need for differences in pressure and there is expected to be strong winds over this weekend.
Hazel Thornton, from the climate change adaptation team, said observational evidence has shown a fall in wind over the last 30 years – although further research is needed. The Met Office is currently working with energy companies to predict how global warming will affect wind patterns in the UK.
"For energy companies, high pressures are problematic because we do not get so much wind over a lot of the UK," she added.
However advocates of renewables said the intermittent nature of wind will not be a problem in the long run because supplies could be shared worldwide, enabling a constant source of energy.
A new report from Energy Watch Group claimed that half of the world's electricity needs could be generated from wind or solar by 2025, with fossil fuels phased out completely by 2037.
The independent research group based their calculations on the current 30 per cent growth in the energy sector and continuing demand for electricity.
Even if growth in the wind sector slows down, the world will be sourcing 23 per cent of electricity from wind by 2025.
Dr Rudolph Rechsteiner, author of the report, said that wind energy will continue to grow as fossil fuels become more expensive, technology improves and the grid is updated.
He said the US and China are already expanding the sector massively and other countries will also be investing in the technology, which is the most viable renewable energy source at the moment.
He said: “In times of rising supply disruption risks and rising cost renewable energy technologies are the only source which provides predictable electricity in terms of economics and in terms of supply.”
Last edited by GRG55; January 10, 2009, 01:45 PM.Comment
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Re: Exon calls for Carbon tax
Are you forgetting the Carter DoctrineOriginally posted by D-Mack View Post
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Re: Exon calls for Carbon tax
Well, well, just came across this...Originally posted by GRG55 View Post
Sounds like the MSM is already out there helping spread a variation of santafe2's "oil bad, solar good" message. And just as EJ/iTulip warned us to look for [quite a while back], the VCs [in this case Kleiner Perkins] are right there pitching in .Does the country need a big gas tax?
Even though energy prices are cheap, many say a straight-up tax on oil and coal is the best way to stop global warming and move the country to cleaner fuels.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- To save the planet and move away from imported fuel, some say a big energy tax is the best way to go.
If the nation is going to develop fuel alternatives that will clean the air, limit global warming and make it energy independent, making fossil fuels more expensive is essential, supporters say.
Otherwise, fossil fuels are just too cheap to let alternatives emerge on a big scale...
..."What's at stake is whether or not America is going to be the winner in the next, great global industry," John Doerr, a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins, told Congress Wednesday that higher fossil fuel prices are, among other things, essential if the U.S. is going to develop renewable industries...
...Still, a carbon tax has attracted scant supporters in Congress.
When Rep. Peter Stark (D-Calif.) proposed one last year, it attracted a total of three co-sponsors among the 435 House members.
"I know it's widely popular and makes a lot of sense to economists and academics," said one Democrat Senate staffer. "But unless a member of Congress was considering early retirement, it's not an approach they would consider on the Hill. It's political suicide."
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Re: Exon calls for Carbon tax
Well, Obama had his own Malaise speech and he also stated that global warming is a national security issueOriginally posted by don View PostAre you forgetting the Carter Doctrine
Obama says climate change a matter of national securityComment
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Re: Exon calls for Carbon tax
I really do need to pay more attention to US politics...:pOriginally posted by GRG55 View PostFor Immediate Release: Thursday, January 8, 2009
STRENGTHEN THE COUNTRY’S ECONOMY AND BOLSTER
Washington, D.C.—As President-elect Obama prepares an economic stimulus bill to address the current challenges facing the American people, Indiana Congressman Steve Buyer believes there is an opportunity to strengthen our country’s energy portfolio and bolster the American energy industry. Congressman Steve Buyer today sent a letter to President-elect Obama asking him to include funding in the stimulus to invest in American-made energy and America’s energy infrastructure.
“America must take steps to prepare for peak oil—when the world’s supply of crude oil peaks in volume, invest in American-made energy, and improve our energy infrastructure. I communicated these concerns to President-elect Obama in my second letter to him outlining proposals to the economic stimulus package,” said Buyer. “In prioritizing our country’s need for a secure and domestic energy supply, we will stimulate the economy of today while ensuring the prosperity of tomorrow.”...
...“Today, America is 63 percent dependent on foreign sources of energy, and we grow more dependent by the year. We need to bridge ourselves to the renewable and alternative energy future in which we all want to live in,” commented Buyer...
...“As a nation we need to secure our energy supply as well as secure American jobs. When we import energy, we export jobs. As a result of our dependence on foreign energy sources, we have lost around three million manufacturing jobs since 2000, this is not acceptable,” added Buyer. ...
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