http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080212/venezuela_us_oil.html?.v=9

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Venezuela's state oil company said Tuesday that it has stopped selling crude to Exxon Mobil Corp. in response to the U.S. oil company's drive to use the courts to seize billions of dollars in Venezuelan assets.

Exxon Mobil is locked in a dispute over the nationalization of its oil ventures in Venezuela that has led President Hugo Chavez to threaten to cut off all Venezuelan oil supplies to the United States. Venezuela is the United States' fourth largest oil supplier.

Have at it.

This is an update to an article of mine that was originally published in The Age back in March this year.

On the 15th March, the Esso/BHP Billiton Bass Strait joint venture asked the Minister for Planning whether a new gas conditioning plant at Longford requires an Environmental Effects Statement. The State Government's new guidelines for assessing projects with significant carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were about to get their first big test.

The gas conditioning plant is required to treat new production from the Kipper gas field. The downside is that it would emit a million tonnes of CO2 every year. While not quite in the same league as a coal-fired power station, this is not the right approach to achieving urgent CO2 reductions.

The ongoing tie between a plateauing oil supply and climate change continues to rear its ugly head. So, for your perusal this evening, I submit the following: A new report titled Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air from the Union of Concerned Scientists asserts that ExxonMobil (XOM) has adopted the tobacco industry's disinformation tactics, as well as some of the same organizations and personnel, to cloud the scientific understanding of climate change and delay action on the issue.

A link to the report can be found here. Hat tips are due to James Fraser of The Energy Blog and Seeking Alpha. Their summary of the report is copied under the fold.

Something to get you started on this Monday open thread. Tim Haab at Environmental Economics recently received a chain-letter email promoting a scheme to lower gas prices by boycotting ExxonMobil. As the reasoning goes, if consumers boycott ExxonMobil, they'll be forced to lower their prices, which will then force everyone else to play along. Haab wants to know—if consumers were actually to carry out the scheme—would it actually make EM lower their prices?* (Don't forget, Haab is an economist, and promises to give his opinion on the issue later this week.)

*I think we all get the naivete of this scheme, but discussing this sort of thing is up many TOD commenters' alley.