Market Currents
"We are losing our shirts" on natural gas, ExxonMobil (XOM +0.7%) CEO Rex Tillerson says,...
-
Wednesday, June 27, 2012, 9:55 AM ET"We are losing our shirts" on natural gas, ExxonMobil (XOM +0.7%) CEO Rex Tillerson says, maintaining that current natural gas prices are not sustainable for the energy industry to continue to cover the cost of finding and producing new supplies. Tillerson also argues the effects of global warming are "manageable," and current warming models aren't accurate.
Other date
Latest Energy & Materials Articles
This news story has 25 comments:
Even with the current shift in some generating plants to gas vs coal, the supply still vastly exceeds the demand, which makes the current low prices not sustainable for long. Any big jump in price and/or decrease in supply will also probably move some generating capacity back to coal.
What Tillerson is "managing" is to fund propaganda campaigns to convince people there is no global warming while Exxon works on melting the polar caps so they can get at the oil beneath them.
Ever hear of solar cycles? Or is that too much cognitive dissonance for you to handle?
The models are based on basic chemistry. CO2 absorbs certain spectra of electromagnetic radiation when it bounces off the Earth's surface.
And the recorded rise in global temperatures is already too great to be due to natural causes. There is no natural process that causes 1 Centrigrade movement in a single century.
Since every rise in global temperatures over the last half billion years has accompanied by big CO2 buildups, the burden is on you to refuse the models that represent the scientific consensus.
Solar cycles are irrelevant.
Science is the act of looking and seeing, checking and rechecking.
If you're not willing to rely on that, then there'll be no convincing you.
Despite the True Believers on both sides, I think the science on the issue is far from settled - there is too much we don't know. As someone pointed out, even the short term seaonal hurricane predictions are often way off base.
http://bit.ly/LBnzsR
Dry, scientific writing, the type that left wing nuts get easily bored with, but a ton of facts which also bores and confounds the left. Better to watch a fluff movie by Al Gore riddled with lies. The same Al Gore who resolutely refuses to debate anyone from the other side on the issue as Al knows he is ignorant when it comes to science even though he did invent the internet.
Here is the raw data on atmospheric CO2:
http://1.usa.gov/LBvnuO
Nature or Science is waiting with baited breath on your article(s) explaining the cause of increasing atmospheric CO2.
2) If Tillerson is losing his shirt on NG, he needs to be focused on XOM operational issues and not prating on scientific issues.
3) What makes the clownish comments on global warming particularly hilarious on SA is the juxtapositiont of global warming comments with all of the pseudo mathematical mumbo jumbo that gets published on why stocks/indexes go up or down.
The good news is that this may well enable a transition to NG and eventually generate the demand needed, but the bad news is it will take a while.
Every other country is looking to the US to either teach them how to frack for nat gas or they are trying to buy up our reserves. Just look at China and Russia, two of our friends :( and notice they have no trouble doing whatever it takes to secure the reserves they need to run their country.
Here, we are looking at sunshine, algea and turbines. Although these ideas have their place and will supplement fossil fuels, they are a long way off. Meanwhile, we have this oversupply of nat gas that has come down so low in price that we are not going to be able to keep drilling at anywhere near the current pace. What we should be doing and I have been pounding the table on this for three years is converting as many of our truck fleets over to nat gas. In addition, ultimately, we should be building up nat gas refueling infrastructure to allow nat gas cars to be an option for consumers like they do in Europe. If Obama had spent 1/10 the amount of money supporting that instead of Solyndra and other failed "green" companies, we would be much further down the road to energy security than what we are now. Lets see, if we build infrastructure s othat there is a market for nat gas we create the following:
More jobs
Energy security
Money stays in US
Cleaner emissions
Cheaper cost to fill up the tank.
What's not to like? That is my type of green.
Spain wrecked its economy chasing a green dream. Sure, we'd all like to snap our fingers and live in a "Jetsons" future where everthing was clean and cheap. It will take a long time to get there and we need to continue with fossil fuels.
Obama's claptrap about outsourcing is laughable. It is he who is outsourcing energy jobs by restricting US development. That increases fossil fuel jobs elsewhere (Venezuela, Saudia Arabia, Nigeria) while restraining them here.
We have the best Oil and Gas companies in the world. They innovate and they are efficient and shareholder friendly. They pay massive amounts of taxes and fund good paying jobs. They should be held up on a pedestal instead of lambasted. When tinpots like Chavez hear Obama bash our own companies he thinks it's a green light to nationalize their investments.
The British hate BP, Mexicans hate Pemex, and the French despise Total with even more vehemence than we hate Exxon/Mobil.
And for the very same reason - they inflict lots of pain on people's wallets, and they make piles of money.
It was the House Republicans who blocked the Natural Gas Act. Never made it through Congress.
We should be shutting in and locking up U.S. reserves of oil and gas and buying and consuming everything that the rest of the world can produce at today's ridiculously low oil prices.
50-75 years from now, when they are drained dry and we have ample alternate fuel sources and no longer need them, we will have plenty of oil and gas feedstock left to supply our chemical industries.