Mission Accomplished! Exxon Profits Sky-High

Our advice? Do everything you can to bring down your use of oil or petrol products of any kind.

Start riding your bike more. There are bikes that will give you an electric assist if you are a bit out of shape.

Buy a scooter, buy a hybrid (electric) car, get solar panels or wind power for your home.

Don't allow grocery stores to sack up your food in plastic bags, either ask for paper (which can be recycled or burned in fireplaces to help start fires) or take your own totes to the store with you. Same with drug stores or any kind of store.

And stop buying that ridiculous "spring water" bottled in plastic. Ever tasted that water when it has been left in that bottle for awhile? Try it. Then think about everything else bottled in plastic.

We leave it to your own imagination what should happen to Humvees.

February 1, 2008

Exxon Mobil Profit Sets Record Again

By JAD MOUAWAD

By any measure, Exxon Mobil’s performance last year was a blowout.

The company reported Friday that it beat its own record for the highest profits ever recorded by any company, with net income rising 3 percent to $40.6 billion, thanks to surging oil prices. The company’s sales, more than $404 billion, exceeded the gross domestic product of 120 countries.

Exxon Mobil earned more than $1,287 of profit for every second of 2007.

The company also had its most profitable quarter ever. It said net income rose 14 percent, to $11.7 billion, or $2.13 a share, in the last three months of the year. The company handily beat analysts’ expectations of $1.95 a share, after missing targets in the last two quarters.

Like most oil companies, Exxon benefited from a near doubling of oil prices, as well as higher demand for gasoline last year. Crude oil prices rose from a low of around $50 a barrel in early 2007 to almost $100 by the end of the year — the biggest jump in oil prices in any one year.
“Exxon sets the gold standard for the industry,” said Fadel Gheit, an oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Company in New York.

Oil companies have all reported strong profits in recent days. Chevron, the second-largest American oil company, said Friday that its profits rose 9 percent to $18.7 billion last year; Royal Dutch Shell on Thursday reported net income for 2007 of $31 billion, up 23 percent and the largest figure ever for a British company.

The backlash against the oil industry, which has periodically intensified as gasoline prices have risen in recent years, was predictably swift on Friday.

One advocacy group, the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, called the profits “unjustifiable.” Some politicians said Congress should rescind the tax breaks awarded two years ago to encourage oil companies to boost their investments in the United States and increase domestic production.

“Congratulations to Exxon Mobil and Chevron — for reminding Americans why they cringe every time they pull into a gas station,” said Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York.
Exxon vigorously defended itself against claims it was responsible for the rise in oil prices.

Anticipating a backlash, Exxon has been running advertisements that highlight the size of the investments it makes to find and develop energy resources — more than $80 billion between 2002 and 2006, with an additional $20 billion planned for 2008. The company said that in the next two decades, energy demand is expected to grow by 40 percent.

“Our earnings reflect the size of our business,” Kenneth P. Cohen, Exxon’s vice president for public affairs, said on a conference call with journalists. “We hope people will focus on the reality of the challenge we are facing.”

Given the darkening prospects for the American economy, which may be headed toward a recession, some analysts said oil company profits might soon reach a peak. Oil prices could fall this year if an economic slowdown reduces energy consumption in the United States, the world’s biggest oil consumer.

Such concerns have pushed oil futures prices down about 10 percent since the beginning of the year. Oil fell $2.79, to $88.96 a barrel, on Friday on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Exxon shares fell 0.5 percent, to $85.95.

Some analysts said high oil prices, and the record profits they create, are masking growing difficulties at many of the major Western oil giants. Faced with resurgent national oil companies — such as PetroChina, Brazil’s Petrobras, or Russia’s Gazprom — Western majors are having a hard time increasing production and renewing reserves.

As oil prices increase, countries like Russia and Venezuela have tightened the screws on foreign investors in recent years, limiting access to energy resources or demanding a bigger share of the oil revenue. At the same time, many of the traditional production regions, such as the North Sea and Alaska, are slowly drying up.

Western majors, which once dominated the global energy business, now control only about 6 percent of the world’s oil reserves. Last year, PetroChina overtook Exxon as the world’s largest publicly traded oil company.

Recently, a quarrel over a major new field in Kazakhstan was resolved after an international consortium, which included Exxon, allowed the Kazakh national oil company to double its stake in the multibillion-dollar venture. In Venezuela, Conoco pulled out of a large heavy oil project last summer after failing to agree on new and much more restrictive terms with the government of President Hugo Chavez. Exxon has filed for arbitration in a similar case.

Speaking at an industry conference last month, Tim Cejka, the president of Exxon’s exploration business, acknowledged that access to oil fields was becoming increasingly challenging. But he said that the global oil industry has been through similar periods of restricted access in the past.
“Access comes in cycles,” said Mr. Cejka. “And I have got to admit, it’s tough right now.”

Excluding acquisitions, Exxon was the only major international oil company with a reserve replacement rate exceeding 100 percent between 2004 and 2006, meaning it found more than one barrel for each barrel it produced, according to a report by Moody’s Investors Service, the rating agency. Exxon said it would release its reserve replacement figures later this month.
Exxon raised its hydrocarbon production in the fourth quarter by 1 percent, thanks to growing natural gas output from projects in Qatar. Natural gas production rose by 12 percent to 10.4 billion cubic feet a day in the fourth quarter. Oil production fell by 6 percent in the last quarter to 2.5 million barrels a day. Because of the structure of some of its production-sharing contracts in Africa, Exxon is entitled to fewer oil barrels as prices rise.

Exxon also spent a total of $35.6 billion for share buybacks and dividends last year, $3 billion more than in 2006.

Separately, the OPEC cartel, which was meeting in Vienna on Friday, decided to leave its production levels unchanged, resisting pressure from developing nations to pump more oil into the global economy.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is set to meet again next month, and the cartel signaled it would be ready to cut production then to make up for a seasonal slowdown in demand in the second quarter. OPEC’s actions mean the cartel is determined to keep prices from falling below $80 a barrel, according to energy experts.

OPEC said in a statement that the uncertainties in the global economy required “vigilant attention to their impact on key market fundamentals.”


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