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.”


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Exposing Exxon-Mobil, by R.F.K, Jr.

These bastards are worse than the Tobacco Companies, and that is saying alot.

I have no idea how the energy companies, like Exxon-Mobil, can be punished, but they must be.

Accountability is our favorite buzzword, as of late.

In a quarter-page advertorial in Thursday's New York Times, ExxonMobil launched a new greenwashing campaign to salvage its earned reputation as Earth's number one global warming villain. For over a decade the giant oil company has waged a successful multi-million dollar propaganda campaign to deceive the public about global warming. Using phony think tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, scientists-for-hire called biostitutes, slick public relations firms, and their indentured servants in the political process, they have intentionally defrauded the public by promoting the notion that global warming is a hoax or a sketchy theory that requires more study.

The company now asserts that its position on global warming has been "misunderstood," but its decade of mischief is well documented.

Exxon has dished out at least $19 million dollars since the negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol (1997) to fund an elaborate network including over 75 industry front groups mobilized in a misleading campaign to cloud the public's understanding of global warming. Their objective has been to counter balance the overwhelming scientific evidence of man-induced climate change with pseudo scientific denials to derail reforms that might effect corporate profits. In 2005, ExxonMobil paid over $3.5 million to 49 different front groups, according to the company's own records, which are collected each year by ExxonSecrets.org and the ExxposeExxon coalition. A report released earlier this month by the Union of Concerned Scientists traces the roots of this fraudulent propaganda broadside - and many of its prime actors - back to the tobacco industry's tactical war on science.

Exxon has also used vast political contributions to guide the Bush administration's posturing on climate change. ExxonMobil successfully arranged the ousting of the world's top climate scientist Robert Watson as chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). An Exxon memo to President Bush's top staffers obtained by NRDC through the Freedom of Information Act asks bluntly, "Can Watson be replaced now at the request of the U.S.?" The White House's carbon cronies obligingly complied, arranging for Watson's dismissal. He was replaced by a little known scientist from New Delhi who would not be regularly available for Congressional hearings.

A 2002 Exxon memo recently obtained by Greenpeace through FOIA coaches one of the President's top environmental advisers Philip Cooney, chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality on how to "improve" administration research on climate change by emphasizing "significant uncertainties" in the science. The New York Times later revealed that Cooney, a former lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute which is generously funded by Exxon, made myriad changes to government climate studies designed to weaken their strong conclusions about the need to act on global warming. Typically Cooney would insert the words "significant and fundamental" before "uncertainties" in the reports. Cooney, a non scientist, helped suppress or alter several major taxpayer funded scientific studies on global warming including a decade-long study commissioned by this President's father. Cooney resigned two days after the Times broke the story. But don't feel badly. Within a week ExxonMobil announced it had hired him.

Exxon has responded to roars of recent outrage over its anti-social antics by announcing that it has stopped funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute which has collected over $2 million from the oil giant since 1998 to weave lies about climate change - and 4-5 other groups that Exxon refused to name. Exxon's new contrition is hardly sincere. The company still continues to fund 40 other groups in its unrelenting campaign of deception. Two weeks ago, the ExxposeExxon coalition - composed of America's most respected environmental groups, including NRDC, the Sierra Club and U.S. PIRG - asked Exxon to disclose the names of all the other groups the company funded this year and the nature of the work they are doing for ExxonMobil. Exxon did not respond to the request.

As further evidence of the company's insincerity, Exxon's chief executive and CEO Rex Tillerson, on Friday told world leaders in Davos that oil companies should not be held responsible for global warming. The blame, he argued, rests instead with the very consumers and government officials his company has spent millions of dollars manipulating and defrauding.
America is a decade late in addressing the serious threat from global warming largely due to ExxonMobil's campaign of deliberate deception. ExxonMobil's conduct amounts to a war on civilization. The company can't simply sweep this legacy of fraud and villainy under the rug with a paid op-ed campaign in the New York Times, or with oily statements shifting the blame to consumers. The company needs to cease its campaign of deception completely if it is to genuinely atone for its crimes against humanity.

ExxonMobil might also apply some of its record profits - estimated at $37 billion last year - toward meaningful solutions to global warming as other U.S. companies have done. For starters ExxonMobil might consider joining a coalition of ten major companies - including industry giants like DuPont, Dow and Alcoa - and leading environmental groups which last week launched the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, calling for firm limits on carbon dioxide emissions to aggressively combat climate change.

stopglobalwarming.org

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.