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Why I Totally Hate Big Oil – And Why You Should Too…
Did you hear the speech that Al Gore gave in Texas the other day saying that the oil industry should take climate change more seriously, that oil could peak in the next decade, that the “social acceptance” for oil was disappearing, that there needed to be a meaningful tax on carbon emissions and that he “strongly supported” the Paris climate agreement?
Oh no, wait. It wasn’t Al Gore. My bad. It was actually Ben van Beurden, chief executive of Shell speaking at an oil industry gathering at the U.S. oil capital of Houston.
Now do you see why I so hate Big Oil?
Well, partly it’s bitterness. For many years now, I – and many sceptics like me – have been accused by climate alarmists of being “in the pay of Big Oil”. But even though we deserve it for promoting fossil fuels so enthusiastically and fighting their critics so heroically, few of us have ever received even a penny for our troubles. That’s because Big Oil is far too busy trying to greenwash its image – as Shell itself did by sponsoring the Guardian’s environment pages for many years – to waste time on the plucky, outspoken heroes who do a better job for Big Oil’s PR than the Big Oil’s paid PR departments do.
Mainly, though it’s disgust. Big Oil has this public image of being an industry for fearless, no-nonsense manly men who aren’t afraid of getting their hands dirty or braving the environmentalists’ wrath in order to do their ugly but important work supplying the world with much-needed energy.
Yet it’s an image almost entirely undeserved.
Almost everyone at a senior level in Big Oil is a craven, simpering, politically correct, spineless, surrender-monkey corporate shill. They’re cowards who are scared of free markets, won’t speak up for capitalism, won’t even defend their core business. Typical of this attitude was the current Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
One of his first moves on becoming CEO of Exxon in 2006 was to announce it would stop funding organisations like the Competitive Enterprise Institute “whose position on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner.” Unlike his punchier predecessor Lee Raymond, Tillerson clearly decided that discretion being the better part of valor, he would throw his industry’s supporters to the wolves.
One of the first big energy stories I covered for Breitbart was the incredible true story of how Chevron Oil fought off a $9.5 billion damages case filed on behalf of Ecuadorean natives whose lands had supposedly been polluted as a result of Chevron’s negligence.
The truly incredible part of the story was that Chevron decided to defend the case. The more usual position of Big Oil is to surrender as soon as possible and settle out of court.
If Big Oil won’t speak out for the oil industry, who will?
Sadly, the burden invariably falls to that small group of maverick believers in free markets and honest science who don’t care about all the brickbats they get for being defenders of “dirty fuel” because they’d rather speak the truth than be popular.
Among them is Steve Milloy who, May 2008, intervened in an Exxon shareholder meeting on behalf of all those shareholders who think that Exxon’s core business should be drilling oil and creating value for shareholders – not getting distracted by trying to make themselves look cuter for their Watermelon (green on the outside, red on the inside) critics. Follow this link and you can hear the huge round applause Milloy won from shareholders when he proposed that Exxon should amend its bye-laws so that it no longer had to waste time on politicised interventions from “nuisance shareholders”.
Stock ownership has become politicized. Many shareholders own stock in publicly-owned corporations for the sole purpose of advancing the shareholders’ own social or political agendas, while simultaneously assailing the corporations’ legitimate business operations. These activist shareholders are “nuisance shareholders.”
A primary tool of nuisance shareholders is the submission of non-binding precatory (advisory) proposals for discussion and vote at annual meetings of shareholders. Proposals from nuisance shareholders can coerce management into making decisions not in the best interests of the Company and its bona fide shareholders, and turn the annual meeting into a media-activist circus.
You’d think Exxon would have been grateful for this fire support from their public. Not one bit. We can see this from Exxon’s response to a submission from Milloy that he intends to make a similar proposal at Exxon’s next shareholder meeting this May. They applied to the SEC to try to get Milloy’s proposal excluded.
Happily, the SEC’s lawyer wasn’t having it.
It goes without saying that Exxon, like Shell, like most Big Oil companies, like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is now using its influence to try to prevent President Trump to fulfil his campaign trail promise to withdraw the U.S. from the UN Paris Climate Agreement.
Ostensibly their excuse is that it would be bad for US international relations and “send the wrong signals”.
In reality, it’s for the worst of reasons. First, it’s because spinelessness is an integral part of their corporate culture: they’ve spent years surrendering to the green movement by paying it Danegeld and by paying lip service to its eco pieties – and they’re not about to grow a pair just because Donald Trump is president.
Second, it’s because they’re so heavily diversified into eco-friendly sectors like “renewables” and into unproven but lucrative technologies like Carbon Capture and Storage that they can’t afford the massive hit they’d suffer if Trump were to sever all ties with the Climate Industrial Complex.
Big Oil is evil all right but not in the way the Greenies would have you think. It’s because, heeding the voices of the industry’s Wormtongues, Big Oil surrendered to the dark forces of Eco Mordor.
It makes you hope that the smaller scale producers of the global fracking industry go from strength to strength – and make the politically correct Big Oil monoliths history.
18 Comments on "Why I Totally Hate Big Oil – And Why You Should Too…"
Jerry McManus on Wed, 15th Mar 2017 1:48 am
Well, I’m glad we got that sorted.
Now, on to more important topics. Like what’s for lunch.
brough on Wed, 15th Mar 2017 4:22 am
Where is Bilbo Baggins when you need him.
Cloggie on Wed, 15th Mar 2017 4:38 am
While I’m still very glad that the cluster Trump-Infowars-Breitbart won the election [1] (with brains Steve Bannon being the real deal) and support The Wall [2] and US protectionism (“America First”), their ideas about oil and the environment are plain stupid.
[1] until Trump will start an insane war against Iran for instance or keeps insisting that Crimea needs to return to Ukraine.
[2] what is taking America so long? Far poorer countries like Macedonia, Bulgaria and Hungary had effective first fences installed in a matter of a few weeks.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/09/15/15/2C56B05300000578-3234913-image-a-64_1442325761202.jpg
rockman on Wed, 15th Mar 2017 7:50 am
“It was actually Ben van Beurden, chief executive of Shell speaking at an oil industry gathering at the U.S. oil capital of Houston.” Why wouldn’t he: after all the consumers will pay the costs…not Big Oil.
superpeasant on Wed, 15th Mar 2017 11:33 am
Breitbart and The Daily Mail. We’re missing the third support here – Mein Kampf anybody?
Cloggie on Wed, 15th Mar 2017 11:36 am
Breitbart and The Daily Mail. We’re missing the third support here – Mein Kampf anybody?
On Dutch forums there is an unwritten law that Godwin’s in 2017 are for losers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
penury on Wed, 15th Mar 2017 12:32 pm
Let me guess, Breitbart is still “Fake News” correct?
Boat on Wed, 15th Mar 2017 12:49 pm
Clog,
Your far right forums like peak oil.com?
superpeasant on Wed, 15th Mar 2017 1:44 pm
Thanks Cloggie, but Godwin dates from 27 years ago. In 2017 I believe that any reference to Brieitbart (and here in the UK the Daily Mail and Daily Express) as though they are rational sources of information should also be disqualified.
Cloggie on Wed, 15th Mar 2017 1:45 pm
peakoil.com is a nice green-left collapse forum with a rare bad apple here and there.
GregT on Wed, 15th Mar 2017 2:39 pm
Much of the planet Earth is green, or at least it used to be. It is now in the advanced stages of collapse. Yes, even the apples.
Apple tree collapse: What we know (and don’t know)
“Kari Peter from PSU has referred to this issue as Rapid Apple Decline (RAD) or Sudden Apple Decline (SAD) due to the sudden collapse of apple trees from the time first symptoms appear to tree death.”
“Unfortunately, there is no clear-cut answer to this problem at the present time.”
“In all likelihood, RAD/SAD is a complex of issues caused by any number of stresses: Drought? Cold injury? Herbicide? Replant disease? All of the above? At this point, more research is needed to answer these types of questions.”
http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/hort/news/orchnews/2016/on-1216a6.htm
Cloggie on Wed, 15th Mar 2017 2:43 pm
Livescreen Dutch TV coverage national elections:
http://www.npo.nl/live/npo-1
Exit poll in 15 minutes
Hawkcreek on Wed, 15th Mar 2017 7:55 pm
I love big oil. They gave me a lot of money over the years, and I don’t think they ever forced anyone to buy their product. Electric autos were available long ago that would satisfy most driving needs of city dwellers.
If small fracking operators kill them off, that’s just the breaks of the game.
GregT on Wed, 15th Mar 2017 7:56 pm
Dutch election result: Mark Rutte sees off Geert Wilders challenge as Netherlands rejects far-Right
“Geert Wilders’s promise to bring a populist “revolution” to Europe fell flat on Wednesday night after his anti-immigrant Party for Freedom failed to live up to supporters’ expectations”
“The possibility that the far-Right firebrand could become the largest party in the Dutch parliament had sent tremors through Europe’s political establishment in recent days fearing yet further destabilization”
“German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, could not restrain his joy, tweeting: “The Netherlands, oh the Netherlands you are a champion!….. Congratulations on this great result.”
The NWO is still alive and well in Euroland. Immigrants welcome!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/15/dutch-election-results-geert-wilders-andmark-rutte-vie-power/
Cloggie on Thu, 16th Mar 2017 9:26 am
The NWO is still alive and well in Euroland. Immigrants welcome!
That’s too simple. The main driver behind multicult since the seventies was Labour (PvdA). The PvdA after its leader den Uyl in the seventies was run by Jews like van Tijn, Cohen, Rottenberg and now Asscher and they do what Jews always do: try to destroy the host civilization through mass migration. But the PvdA is now itself destroyed and today another PvdA Jew (Rob Oudkerk) called for abolishing the PvdA.
Hardcore multicult is now mega-out in Holland, at the population level. None of the other parties advocate that everybody is welcome here. But at the same time, this refugee mantra is still alive and apart from Wilders, nobody wants to abolish asylum.
Meanwhile the PVV is now the 2nd party in Holland. And there is a new very smart 2nd populist in parliament, whose is far more European than closet-neocon Wilders, with his ties to and money from the likes of Alan Dershovitz and Pamela Geller: Thierry Baudet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F5SKR47Ni4
(Here in Budapest pleading for border fences)
Baudet was the main organizer of the anti-Ukraine-referendum, an embarrassment of the US and the EU and Putin must have loved it. Baudet is pro-Russia.
Things are moving in the right direction. Perhaps not as fast as desired, but never the less.
Cloggie on Thu, 16th Mar 2017 11:34 am
“German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, could not restrain his joy, tweeting: “The Netherlands, oh the Netherlands you are a champion!….. Congratulations on this great result.”
He did it in Dutch:
https://twitter.com/peteraltmaier/status/842107611734544384
He was referring to a Dutch deplorable singer, Andre Hazes, who, oh irony, no doubt would have voted PVV.ROFL
Here is the very nationalist (football) song Altmaier was referring to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9WgXmMxKps
“We love Orange”
Antius on Thu, 16th Mar 2017 5:04 pm
‘Dutch election result: Mark Rutte sees off Geert Wilders challenge as Netherlands rejects far-Right’
Except he didn’t. Wilders started the election with 15 seats and finished with 20. That isn’t a bad result, it just isn’t the earthquake a lot of people were expecting. Momentum builds incrementally in politics.
I would humbly suggest that the Right in the Netherlands and UK have been pursuing the wrong tactic. We have been attempting to fight the lefty mainstream through elections, through overt political campaigns. Whilst this is an important part of the process, it cannot succeed alone. What is needed is an underground movement through covert secret societies, gradually recruiting and changing public opinion beneath the official radar. Men like Wilders can then fight the battle that is already won.
Cloggie on Thu, 16th Mar 2017 6:47 pm
Antius, in the 21st century, secret societies are… well you are looking at one as you read this. Forums have global reach. Since 2000 I have effectively spent several man years on internet posting activities on Dutch, US and German forums.