Exxon Stops Drilling

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Bill Georgevich reporting

After posting the largest corporate profit in the recorded history of mankind, Exxon has decided to halt drilling and development of existing oil leases - despite Sarah Palin's campaign to the contrary. In a move to make the perfect storm for another oil crisis, this decision to use profits to buy back Exxon stock, rather than "Drill Baby Drill", proves that the world’s largest corporation is continuing to control the world’s economy to suit themselves.

Some folks may think that high oil and gas prices will hasten the renewable green economy. And to some extent that is true. But why not have both during this time of world recession?

Lower gas prices translate into a savings of about $200/month for the average American family of 4. That's essentially a $2400/year cash injection stimulus check!

Why not embrace the Obama and Gore green initiatives and require the oil companies to keep prices down by keeping supply up? The oil lobby begged Bush for more areas to drill in 2008 during the oil crisis they completely made up, and now they aren't drilling on the leases they already have?

This ranks along with AIG as one of the greatest scandals of the 21st century. We need low fuel prices to sustain a recovery and buy us the time to convert our energy economy to a renewable world.

Oil Prices Down, Gas Prices Up

Bill Georgevich reporting

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Last year on The Renewable Minute we asked, How can oil prices plummet after being so high? The answer: SPECULATION, and the speculators were fleeing the market. Now gas prices are creeping up, even as oil prices continue to fall. How? Oil refineries are reducing the supply to increase demand and pump up the price. Guess Exxon-Mobile doesn’t want a world recession to interfere with windfall profits for 2009.

And speaking of deja vu from late 2008: Have you noticed those Exxon ads are starting to show up everywhere as they did when gas was $4 a gallon? About 2 weeks before gas prices started creeping up again, Exxon was back in my Yahoo inbox, this time with a kinder, gentler message about renewable energy research, a politically more correct position in line with the Obama-Chu-Al Gore cultural creatives who currently rule the roost.

Our next program will be dedicated to the unveiling of the renewable energy provisions Obama's Stimulus Package. We’ll be visiting the new government website Recovery.gov, which promises total transparency, to look into a curious 3+ billion dollar line item for "fossil fuel renewable energy research." Join us next time to find out what that means.

Is global warming dead?

Bill Georgevich reporting

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Many Republicans who already thought carbon cap and trade regulation was bad for the economy, now say that with the growing global economic crisis, American energy companies cannot afford to be green. Like the “Drill, baby, drill!” hysteria promoted by Governor Sarah Palin in the Vice Presidential debate, Republican congressmen and senators are warning that global warming will just have to wait.

The AP reports:

Democratic leaders in the House and the Senate, and both presidential candidates, continue to rank tackling global warming as a chief goal next year.

But the focus on stabilizing the economy probably will make it more difficult to pass a law to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. At the very least, it will push back when the reductions would have to start. As one Republican senator put it, the green bubble has burst.

"Clearly it is somewhere down the totem pole given the economic realities we are facing," said Tom Williams, a spokesman for Duke Energy Corp., an electricity producer that has supported federal mandates on greenhouse gases. Duke is a member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an association of businesses and non-profit groups that has lobbied Congress to act.

Just months ago, chances for legislation passing in the next Congress and becoming law looked promising. The presidential candidates support mandatory cuts and a Democratic majority is ready to act on the problem after years of the Bush administration resistance.

But the most popular remedy for slowing global warming, a mechanism know as cap-and-trade, could put further stress on a teetering economy. Under such a system, the government would establish a market for carbon dioxide by giving or selling credits to companies with operations that emit greenhouse gases. The companies can then choose whether to invest in technologies to reduce emissions to meet targets or instead buy credits from other companies who have already met them.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Representative Rick Boucher (D-Va.), said that in light of the economic downturn, a bill that would give polluters permits free of charge would be preferable. "The first way we can control program costs is by not charging industrial emitters," said Boucher, who released a first draft of a bill this past week with the chairman of the House energy and commerce committee, Representative John Dingell ( D-Mich.). Giving away right-to-pollute permits was one of the options.

Other Democrats, however, see a cap-and-trade bill - and the government revenues it would generate from selling permits - as an engine for economic growth. Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama supports auctioning off all permits, using the money to help fund alternative energy.

"If you see this as a job creation opportunity for the U.S. to develop the products that are then sold around the world, then you should be optimistic about what the impact of passage would mean for the American economy," said Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.).

Conservative Republicans, who were never fans of a law to curb greenhouse gases, have used the economic downturn as a rallying cry. Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, the senior Republican on the Senate environment and public works committee, in a blog entry this month, criticized 152 House members for releasing a set of principles to tackle global warming in the midst of the economic turmoil. "The current economic crisis only reinforces the public's wariness about any climate bill that attempts to increase the costs of energy and jeopardizes jobs," Inhofe said.

Representative Joe Barton (R-Texas) took the argument a step further when he said the Boucher-Dingell bill could lead the country "off the economic cliff." Even supporters of federal regulation of greenhouse gases acknowledge the difficulty given the state of the economy.

Senator John Warner (R-Va.), a lead sponsor of a Senate bill to curb greenhouse gases that failed this year, acknowledged that the economy could delay when reductions in carbon dioxide would start. Warner told The AP that any bill should allow the president to decide. "We must continue to think and devise a piece of legislation that will enable the president of the United States to control timing ... dependent on the president's analysis for the ability of the economy to assume the financial burdens," he said.

The U.S. is not alone. As the economic crisis has spread to markets across the globe, work to curb greenhouse gases elsewhere has stalled.

Earlier this past week, Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN climate panel, said discussions about global warming solutions were "on the back burner."

Pachauri shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. vice-president Al Gore for their work on climate change."I'm absolutely sure that climate change will be the last thing people will think about at this point in time," he said. "Sooner or later, they will come back to it."

The upside is that in hard economic times, and with high energy prices, the amount of pollution in the air tends to decline. But environmentalists say it won't be enough to stop temperatures from rising.