Exxon Mobil Corp., you may have heard, just ended the most profitable year ever, for any American corporation. Ever. To the tune of $34 billion.
That means Exxon pulled down about $1,110 a second last year.
Nonetheless, as Carl Pope extensively documents, the company remains one of the biggest deadbeats in the world, still digging in its heels about paying victims of the Exxon Valdez oil spill (2,000 of which are dead -- and their surviving family members have no standing in the case, and will never receive anything). Then there's the matter of oil and gas royalties, which -- despite the skyrocketing cost of oil and gas, and subsequent industry profits -- have remained level over the past few years. All that profit is going directly into corporate coffers.
"Without a shadow of a doubt, Exxon has the best management in the oil industry,"' said Doug Leggate, an analyst at Citigroup Inc. in New York.
Yeah, I guess you could say that. If you were a soulless fuckwit.
Anyhoo, the point of all this is that ExxposeExxon has a new video up lampooning Exxon, and it's kinda funny.
(Also, here's my tribute to departing Exxon CEO Lee Raymond, from August '05.)
Oil: enough energy to melt glaciers!
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jdhlax Posted 5:16 pm
29 Jan 2006
Re "the skyrocketing cost of oil and gas," the U.S. has the lowest gasoline prices in the world by far. Quit crying about gas prices, you sound like some right wing anti-environmental jerk. Gasoline averages around $6/gallon in western Europe, and it should cost at least $10/gallon everywhere!
Jeff Hoffman
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Tom Philpott Posted 3:19 am
30 Jan 2006
The price of oil may not be as high as it would be if you ruled the world; and indeed, it remains well below its 1979 peak, in inflation-adjusted terms. But it's absurd to deny that its price has "skyrocketed", as this chart will show.
Since 1999, the real price of crude has surged by something like a factor of six.
Has this been a boon for the environment? Maybe not. U.S. consumers have cut down on gas consumption a bit since crude stabilized above $50/barrel a year or so ago, but not by much. Meanwhile, as David points out, the royalties the oil majors pay to host countries have been flat. That has meant a windfall in profit for the oil majors--and encouraged them to invest in more capacity: i.e., dig more oil wells. Ultimately, bad not only for humans, but for the birds and otters you mention above.
$10/gallon gas? Sure, sign me up. I despise cars; I find driving a distasteful, and thankfully relatively rare, necessity. Surely, the car, and the vast billions of dollars that have gone into building out the infrastructure that serves it worldwide, was a grave and maybe fatal error for humanity. Traditionally praised even by liberals for his interstate-highway program, Eisenhower may yet draw widespread derision as a fool. (Certainly, and I am anticipating your retort here, JD, he was a villain (and oil-company shill; see Iran, Shah of) in foreign-policy matters).
But getting to the $10 level, by market forces alone, might prove our final undoing.
There will likely be enormous profits made in the final leg of a "peak oil" scenario, and much of the windfall may well be spent trying to squeeze out the last drop of crude. There is more work to be done than merely cheering on higher oil/gas prices.
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jdhlax Posted 5:10 pm
30 Jan 2006
Jeff Hoffman
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