The Oil Drum

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.

Late last week, ExxonMobil won a court order to freeze PDVSA (the Venezuelan national oil company) assets overseas, up to a value of $12 billion, as part of a dispute over oil fields in the country that Venezuela has nationalised, but for which Exxon has refused to accept the compesantion proposed by the Venezuelans. 6 oil companies are in that situation, and 4 of them accepted Chavez's terms, Conoco being the other holdout with Exxon.

Today, Chavez hit back, by threatening to cut off oil deliveries to the USA

"If you freeze us, if you really manage to freeze us, if you damage us, then we will hurt you. Do you know how? We are not going to send oil to the United States," Chavez said on his weekly TV show.

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.

As part of a public relations outreach effort to improve their image on climate change, Exxon Mobil invited a half-dozen or so green-shaded bloggers to a conference call with Ken Cohen, their Vice President of Public Affairs. The Oil Drum editors were invited, and I ended up being the one to do it. Here are a few thoughts.

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.

Tim Haab answers the question about whether the ExxonMobil boycott will work.

Otherwise, thread away.

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.

I'm a couple days late with this, but on Tuesday, Gristmill had an amusing post about a blog entry written by Jason Vines, Chrysler's head of PR, on their private "media blog":

Despite a documented history of blowing their exorbitant profits on outlandish executive salaries and stock buybacks, and hoarding their bounty by avoiding technologies, policies and legislation that would protect the population and environment and lower fuel costs, Big Oil insists on transferring all of that responsibility on the auto companies.

Yes, even though the automakers have spent billions developing cleaner, more efficient technologies such as high-feature engines, hybrid powertrains, multi-displacement systems, flexible fuel vehicles, and fuel cells, Big Oil would rather fill the pockets of its executives and shareholders, rather than spend sufficient amounts to reduce the price of fuel, letting consumers, during tough economic times, pick up the tab.

So, what's going on out there? Let's see.

• Oil prices are falling again, and the US just reported a big jump in stocks of crude. Why? It appears that refineries are in maintenance season. This doesn't seem to be affecting the price at the pumps, though. Hmmm. Is demand down these days? Not all news is rosy, though. This article also reports: "Iran made a statement to the International Atomic Energy Agency earlier Wednesday in which it threatened the United States with 'harm and pain.'"


• In Nigeria, the head of the military has been removed from his post on suspicion that he's involved with theft of crude oil. You may be wondering what happens to that oil: "The crude oil is siphoned from pipelines and wellheads in the mangrove-lined creeks of the delta, loaded on to ocean-going tankers and exported to refineries." What I want to know is, who's buying it?

Each year, ExxonMobil publishes its view of the long-term trends of worldwide economic growth and energy demand: The Outlook for Energy. In the newly-released 2005 version, the energy giant's basic conclusion--that through the year 2030, traditional fossil fuels will continue to supply the vast majority of energy needs--remains the same, although the mix and sources are adjusted slightly.

Lots of good stuff from Mike over at GCC...(link)