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Subject: RE: BS: Exxon Mobil Corp. Record profits From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor Date: 11 Aug 08 - 02:29 AM >>From: GUEST,Sawzaw Date: 11 Aug 08 - 12:16 AM >>How can a tiny tree absorb the amount of CO2 produced by burning a big tree? You haven't explained it yet. The amount of CO2 converted by a large tree is much more than a small tree, over a period of time, the tiny tree can replace the big tree in it's capacity to convert CO2 into O2. In the mean time the amount if CO2 in the biosphere is increasing because you have replaced a big tree with a small tree. If you leave the big tree alone to absorb the CO2 released from burning the fossil fuel, which by the way was originally trees and other organic matter, The tree will be there to absorb the CO2 produced.<< Who said it had to be one tree? several small trees gave more surface area than one large one. Eventually the big tree will die and all its carbon will be released. >>>Where are these trees going to grow. On cropland and raising food prices even more. Where are trees growing now? >>>How much as the corn ethanol program lowered the price of gas? It takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than the amount of energy you get out of it. It was feel good legislation and a boondoggle. Maybe someday ethanol production will pay off but I think it is better to skip over all this cleaner fuels bandaid approach that still produce CO2 and concentrate on energy technology that does not depend on burning anything. In the meantime use up whatever gas and oil we can find here. I think that is what T Boone is saying. Solar wind and nuclear with oil and gas as a tide me over.<< Solar and wind are the ultimate goal according to Pickens. You should pay closer attention. >>>Hybrid cars should be replaced by totally battery powered vehicles with longer lasting more compact and lighter weight lithium batteries. That is the goal of some car and battery makers. But Plug in hybrids presently give a better balance of weight and range. Supercapacitors are also a very promising technology. If they are based on carbon nanotubes, in the future they may be able to store more power per unit of weight than a battery and be charged in less time than it takes to fill a car with gas. It will be a bitch to develop a battery powered airliner though. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Exxon Mobil Corp. Record profits From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor Date: 11 Aug 08 - 04:13 AM >>It will be a bitch to develop a battery powered airliner though. There is always rubber band power. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Exxon Mobil Corp. Record profits From: Barry Finn Date: 11 Aug 08 - 10:31 AM Whoops, there goes another rubber tree plant. Barry |
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Subject: RE: BS: Exxon Mobil Corp. Record profits From: Peace Date: 11 Aug 08 - 12:08 PM But he's got HIGH HOPES |
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Subject: RE: BS: Exxon Mobil Corp. Record profits From: GUEST,Sawzaw Date: 12 Aug 08 - 11:46 PM "Solar and wind are the ultimate goal according to Pickens. You should pay closer attention." I have said that the ultimate coal is wind and solar but there is something even better, fusion reactors. Are you saying that several small trees are going to fit in the same space that the big tree occupied? "Eventually the big tree will die and all its carbon will be released." True but you would have to use only trees that die from natural causes to break even. You will still not reduce the existing CO2 in the atmosphere and you would not reverse global warming. The only way to reverse Global warming is to quit burning fuel and leave the trees alone to do their job. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Exxon Mobil Corp. Record profits From: GUEST,Sawzaw Date: 14 Aug 08 - 11:52 PM Big Oil Not Sitting On Oil Acreage Despite Democrats' Claims Roy Maynard Congressional Democrats now have their unified response to increasing calls for oil exploration in Alaska and in the waters off our shores: The energy companies, they say, are already sitting on plenty of oil, refusing to recover it. But is that true? "Energy companies are not producing oil or gas on 68 million acres of federal land under their control," claims Congressman Maurice Hinchey, a New York Democrat. "The fact of the matter is Congress has already allowed oil companies to drill, but those companies are refusing to drill because they want to lock up as much federal land as possible and wait for oil to rise to $200 or $300 a barrel so that they can make even greater profits than they are making now." Therefore, the Democrats say, there's no need to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf, despite the crippling rise of gasoline prices. "Why should the U.S. government continue to give away precious acres of public land to massive energy companies when they've already demonstrated that they will just sit on those acres and not produce oil in a timely fashion?" The party even advanced a bill last week they called "Use It or Lose It," which would deny energy companies additional leases until they "demonstrate that they are diligently developing" the leases they already have. "If they were showing in good faith that they were drilling on some of the 68 million acres they have now, it might change some of our attitudes," says Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. Yet the unified response rings hollow and untrue. Oil companies in the business of finding, retrieving and selling petroleum don't want to? The best work debunking the Democrats' claim comes from the reliable Investors Business Daily. "This is yet another slander of 'Big Oil' by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi one that has become a major talking point for Democrats in Congress," the newspaper said in a July 3 editorial. "It's completely dishonest." Oil companies are driven by profits, and they've already sunk billions of dollars into those existing leases. And they are drilling an increase in activity of more than 66 percent since 2000, according to that editorial. "They are searching for oil even as you read this," the Daily says. "Some parts of those 68 million acres will have oil, some won't. But at $145 a barrel, you can bet oil companies have plenty of incentive to find it." In fact, I have a friend who supplies oilfield equipment. He says he's now spending much of his time explaining to customers that he's having trouble meeting all their pipe needs the demand is extremely heavy, and the supply is being further limited by a worldwide shortage in steel. The Daily's helpful editorial goes on to dispel several more myths. Can we drill our way out of the energy crisis? "Actually, we can," it notes. "Conservative estimates put the total amount of recoverable oil in conventional deposits at about 39 billion barrels. Offshore we have another 89 billion barrels or so. In ANWR, 10 billion." That's not counting the oil shale deposits with an estimated 1 trillion barrels, or natural gas. As for those who claim additional drilling won't impact gas prices for years, remember: what's helping to drive prices upward is the oil futures market. "Markets would suddenly have to discount future oil prices for the expected gain in oil supply," the Daily says. "That would cause oil prices, especially in futures markets, to drop." Congressional Democrats are already feeling the pressure to allow additional drilling, but so far they're not budging. "This call for drilling in areas that are protected is a hoax," Ms. Pelosi said on Thursday. "It's an absolute hoax on the part of the Republicans and this Bush administration." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Exxon Mobil Corp. Record profits From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor Date: 15 Aug 08 - 12:02 AM Sawzaw If you want oil company propaganda go here! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Exxon Mobil Corp. Record profits From: GUEST,Sawzaw Date: 15 Aug 08 - 04:03 PM Most N.M. Leases See Drilling Monday, 11 August 2008 Opponents of opening new areas offshore and in Alaska to oil drilling frequently cite the fact that millions of acres already leased by oil and gas companies sit idle. Oil companies, they say, are hoarding and should drill these leases before potential new fields are opened. But, in New Mexico, more than three fourths of leased federal acres are delivering natural gas or crude oil. Some of the leases that aren't producing simply came up dry, and some others have been tied up by environmental and conservation groups opposed to drilling. Those include Otero Mesa in southern New Mexico and the Galisteo Basin north of Albuquerque and near Santa Fe. The state's Oil Conservation Division, which regulates groundwater protection on state and federal land leased to oil and gas companies, has also blocked some new exploration on leases in Rio Arriba County. Big picture numbers: The Bureau of Land Management has leased 5.4 million acres of federal land to oil and gas producers in New Mexico. Of that, about 3.9 million acres are in production, according to Tony Herrell, the BLM's state deputy director for minerals.........." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Exxon Mobil Corp. Record profits From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 15 Aug 08 - 07:16 PM The American Petroleum Institute has a very good website, but trying to educate the average American on energy may be a hopeless task. The facts brought up in the little API 'test' linked there has been considered in several threads here and the details behind the answers are available there. Neocomies posting here are economic dinosaurs, ignorant of the geopolitical considerations that have caused all progressive world economies to adopt the capitalist system, whether driven by the people or in part state directed from the top. Unfortunately,the fundamentals of economics, geopolitics, wealth creation and capitalism are given little attention in North American schools, and the average person is too lazy to look beyond the nonsense spouted by bloggers. The U. S. oil reserves are less that 3% of the world's total. International oil companies control only 5% of estimated reserves. The rest are controlled by government owned companies. The U. S. will depend more and more on government-owned petroleum reserves, and equitable contracts are needed. Coal reserves are large, and will continue to be used for generation of electricity, but use and management of gases and other waste products should be a priority. Other forms of generating energy- nuclear, solar, wind, fuel cell- all should have their place but implementation to serious levels will take a generation. Drilling in new areas and development of infrastructure will not bring important quantities of new oil into the picture for 10 years- provided that the pie-in-the-sky figures bandied about are even partly correct. There will be many disappointments because reservoirs may be tight, thermal conditions were unfavorable to the development of liquid hydrocarbons, development costs too high and many other factors. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Exxon Mobil Corp. Record profits From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor Date: 15 Aug 08 - 07:53 PM API is a trade industry association, the information they present is totally biases, as it should be expected. They exist to promote the interests of the oil companies. With that is mind, they are a good website. As Sawzaw's aim also seems to be the promotion of the interests of the oil companies, I thought that he should know about them. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Exxon Mobil Corp. Record profits From: GUEST,Sawzaw Date: 15 Aug 08 - 09:22 PM Most N.M. Leases See Drilling Monday, 11 August 2008, 15:00 CDT Opponents of opening new areas offshore and in Alaska to oil drilling frequently cite the fact that millions of acres already leased by oil and gas companies sit idle. Oil companies, they say, are hoarding and should drill these leases before potential new fields are opened. But, in New Mexico, more than threefourths of leased federal acres are delivering natural gas or crude oil. Some of the leases that aren't producing simply came up dry, and some others have been tied up by environmental and conservation groups opposed to drilling. Those include Otero Mesa in southern New Mexico and the Galisteo Basin north of Albuquerque and near Santa Fe. The state's Oil Conservation Division, which regulates groundwater protection on state and federal land leased to oil and gas companies, has also blocked some new exploration on leases in Rio Arriba County. Big picture numbers: The Bureau of Land Management has leased 5.4 million acres of federal land to oil and gas producers in New Mexico. Of that, about 3.9 million acres are in production, according to Tony Herrell, the BLM's state deputy director for minerals...... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Exxon Mobil Corp. Record profits From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 15 Aug 08 - 10:28 PM Prospective leases sometimes sit idle until economic conditions are deemed favorable by the economic advisors in the companies. The price per barrel is dropping fast, back to around $110-115,bbl., and some prospects which looked good three weeks ago, have been put back on the rear burner. No point in break-even or loss production. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Exxon Mobil Corp. Record profits From: Teribus Date: 17 Sep 08 - 05:45 AM $93.89 a barrel now JtS and dropping. Has that got anything to do with Bush/Cheney/Iraq War/"evil neo-con conspiracies"??? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Exxon Mobil Corp. Record profits From: pdq Date: 17 Sep 08 - 06:21 AM Brent "spot" price: $90.06 / barrel. That is still $2.145 per gallon of crude oil "as is, where is". There is a lot of work required to refine and transport it before the gas stations fill their storage tanks. Also, a huge share of profit goes to the US government in taxes. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Exxon Mobil Corp. Record profits From: Sandy Mc Lean Date: 17 Sep 08 - 08:22 AM [That is still $2.145 per gallon of crude oil "as is, where is".] It is a great mis-conception to believe that is the price actually paid for most of the crude . Much of it is supplied by themselves (big oil) to themselves and they only pay the higher spot market price to top up their supply. The USA may import a lot of crude but it also produces a lot more than that within it's own borders. It also has a stable supply from Canada. The spot market price is driven by speculaters ( gamblers) who hope that the price will increase even more. Hopefully some of these bastards have recently lost their shirts! Anyone who believes that Exxon is paying the "world price" for every gallon of crude is pretty gullable. As Woody said: "Some will rob you with a six-gun; some with a fountain pen!" |
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Subject: RE: BS: Exxon Mobil Corp. Record profits From: pdq Date: 17 Sep 08 - 08:43 AM "...paying the "world price" for every gallon of crude..." Please cite where anybody but yourself has made such a claim. "Hopefully some of these bastards have recently lost their shirts!" Real nice guy, aren't you. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Exxon Mobil Corp. Record profits From: GUEST,Kevin Parker Date: 17 Sep 08 - 10:49 AM Interesting Statistics on US oil production/consumption on this page: http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html Hope it might illuminate the debate cheers KP |
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Subject: RE: BS: Exxon Mobil Corp. Record profits From: GUEST,Sawzaw Date: 17 Sep 08 - 12:02 PM A Few Speculators Dominate Vast Market for Oil Trading By David Cho Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, August 21, 2008; Page A01 Regulators had long classified a private Swiss energy conglomerate called Vitol as a trader that primarily helped industrial firms that needed oil to run their businesses. But when the Commodity Futures Trading Commission examined Vitol's books last month, it found that the firm was in fact more of a speculator, holding oil contracts as a profit-making investment rather than a means of lining up the actual delivery of fuel. Even more surprising to the commodities markets was the massive size of Vitol's portfolio -- at one point in July, the firm held 11 percent of all the oil contracts on the regulated New York Mercantile Exchange. The discovery revealed how an individual financial player had gained enormous sway over the oil market without the knowledge of regulators. Other CFTC data showed that a significant amount of trading activity was concentrated in the hands of just a few speculators. ad_icon The CFTC, which learned about the nature of Vitol's activities only after making an unusual request for data from the firm, now reports that financial firms speculating for their clients or for themselves account for about 81 percent of the oil contracts on NYMEX, a far bigger share than had previously been stated by the agency. That figure may rise in coming weeks as the CFTC checks the status of other big traders. Some lawmakers have blamed these firms for the volatility of oil prices, including the tremendous run-up that peaked earlier in the summer. "It is now evident that speculators in the energy futures markets play a much larger role than previously thought, and it is now even harder to accept the agency's laughable assertion that excessive speculation has not contributed to rising energy prices," said Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.). He added that it was "difficult to comprehend how the CFTC would allow a trader" to acquire such a large oil inventory "and not scrutinize this position any sooner." The CFTC, which refrains from naming specific traders in its reports, did not publicly identify Vitol. The agency's report showed only the size of the holdings of an unnamed trader. Vitol's identity as that trader was confirmed by two industry sources with direct knowledge of the matter. CFTC documents show Vitol was one of the most active traders of oil on NYMEX as prices reached record levels. By June 6, for instance, Vitol had acquired a huge holding in oil contracts, betting prices would rise. The contracts were equal to 57.7 million barrels of oil -- about three times the amount the United States consumes daily. That day, the price of oil spiked $11 to settle at $138.54. Oil prices eventually peaked at $147.27 a barrel on July 11 before falling back to settle at $114.98 yesterday. The documents do not say how much Vitol put down to acquire this position, but under NYMEX rules, the down payment could have been as little as $1 billion, with the company borrowing the rest. The biggest players on the commodity exchanges often operate as "swap dealers" who primarily invest on behalf of hedge funds, wealthy individuals and pension funds, allowing these investors to enjoy returns without having to buy an actual contract for oil or other goods. Some dealers also manage commodity trading for commercial firms. To build up the vast holdings this practice entails, some swap dealers have maneuvered behind the scenes, exploiting their political influence and gaps in oversight to gain exemptions from regulatory limits and permission to set up new, unregulated markets. Many big traders are active not only on NYMEX but also on private and overseas markets beyond the CFTC's purview. These openings have given the firms nearly unfettered access to the trading of vital goods, including oil, cotton and corn...." Much More at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/20/AR2008082003898.html |
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Subject: RE: BS: Exxon Mobil Corp. Record profits From: GUEST,Sawzaw Date: 17 Sep 08 - 12:06 PM Swiss oil trading firm Vitol SA pleads guilty in oil-for-food case, will pay $17.5 million The Associated Press November 20, 2007 NEW YORK: Swiss oil trading firm Vitol SA pleaded guilty Tuesday to a larceny charge in connection with a scheme to pay secret kickbacks to the Iraqi government in exchange for oil under the United Nations' scandal-ridden oil-for-food program, state prosecutors said. District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said the company pleaded guilty to a single count of grand larceny in the first degree in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Vitol will pay restitution of $13 million (€8.8 million) to the Development Fund for Iraq and will make a payment of $4.5 million (€3 million) to the city and state of New York. "The Oil for Food Programme was established by the United Nations with the noble goal of providing for the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people," Morgenthau said in a statement. "One outcome of this investigation, and last week's joint investigation involving Chevron, is to insure that illegal funds that were paid to Saddam Hussein's government are redirected to benefit the Iraqi people." Prosecutors alleged that Vitol, through an associated entity or third parties, paid $13 million in kickbacks to Iraqi officials in connection with oil purchases under the program from June 2001 through September 2002, but allowed false representations to be made to the U.N. that no kickbacks were paid. Today in Business with Reuters Wall Street, unsatisfied, bids down stocks Fed rescues AIG with $85 billion loan for 80% stake Lloyds TSB in talks to buy HBOS Vitol's case is one of several that are the result of a wide-ranging criminal probe into the oil-for-food program. Last week, Chevron Corp. agreed to pay $30 million (€20.2 million) to settle civil and criminal charges related to secret surcharges paid by third-party merchants in exchange for oil under the program. Nine people, including former Coastal Corp. Chairman Oscar S. Wyatt, have either pleaded guilty or been convicted of criminal charges in the case. Criminal charges are pending against six other individuals, including the program's former executive director, Benon V. Sevan. In February, El Paso Corp. agreed to pay $7.7 million (€5.2 million) to settle civil and criminal charges that it indirectly paid $5.5 million (€3.7 million) in illegal surcharges to Iraq through purchases of crude oil from outside parties under the oil-for-food program. The oil-for-food program was designed to allow the government of Iraq, which was facing international sanctions, to sell oil in exchange for food, medical supplies and other humanitarian needs." http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/20/business/NA-FIN-US-Vitol-Oil-for-Food.php |
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Subject: RE: BS: Exxon Mobil Corp. Record profits From: Barry Finn Date: 18 Sep 08 - 12:54 AM With Exxon's record profits being made public, you'd think that somewhere you'd hear the cry of "Fowl" when they still refeuse to pay the fines levied against them more than 15yrs ago for the Valdez episode in Alaska. Barry |
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Subject: RE: BS: Exxon Mobil Corp. Record profits From: DougR Date: 18 Sep 08 - 01:42 AM Good for Exxon! My grandson is a Project Engineer with Exxon and he makes damn good money. The shareholders must be pleased. DougR |
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Subject: RE: BS: Exxon Mobil Corp. Record profits From: Peace Date: 18 Sep 08 - 01:46 AM Kids still need to eat. |
