A federal judge on Wednesday issued a ruling that could clear the way for a multimillion-dollar payout of punitive damages to thousands of commercial fishermen and others who claimed harm from the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989.
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Judge Russel Holland
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Judge H. Russel Holland of Anchorage rejected a bid from one plaintiff, Sea Hawk Seafoods Inc., to throw out a complex allocation plan for the damages and replace it with one that would steer potentially millions more dollars to the company.
An environmental disaster of epic proportions has occurred in Tennessee. Monday night, 2.6 million cubic yards (the equivalent of 525.2 million gallons, 48 times more than the Exxon Valdez spill by volume) of coal ash sludge broke through a dike of a 40-acre holding pond at TVA's Kingston coal-fired power plant covering 400 acres up to six feet deep, damaging 12 homes and wrecking a train.
According to the EPA the cleanup will take at least several weeks, but could take years. Officials also said that the magnitude of this spill is such that the entire area could be declared a federal superfund site.
Summary: In an article about President-elect Barack Obama's emphasis on alternative energy production in his economic stimulus speech, Reuters quoted criticism of Obama's plan by Thomas Pyle of the Institute for Energy Research. However, the article did not mention the Institute for Energy Research's ties to the oil industry or that Exxon Mobil Corp. has funded the organization.
At the same time that ExxonMobil was racking up the largest quarterly profit of any U.S. company in history - $14.8 billion - the oil giant was fighting in court to avoid making the interest payment in the long-running case brought by victims of the 1989 Valdez supertanker spill in Alaska. In case you were wondering, the sum the plaintiffs say Exxon owes in interest, about $500 million, is about three days' worth of company profits.
One thing has been driving me crazy about this drilling debate - everyone seems to assume that if we drill for oil in the US, that we will get the oil. And hence, we won't be dependent on foreign oil anymore. But we won't get anything, Exxon-Mobil will.
The oil that comes from that drilling will not be United States property (Republicans aren't suggesting we nationalize the oil companies, are they?). It will be the property of whichever oil company got the rights to that contract. They can then sell it to whoever they like - and they will. They will sell it on the world market, so the Chinese will have just as much access to the oil that comes out of the coast of Florida as we will.
The Times has an update on the efforts of western oil majors to secure Iraq's oil, noting "The big players have been shut out since nationalisation in 1972. Now they see their chance to get in" - Oil giants are itching to invade Iraq.
Yet since the Iraqi government nationalised the industry in 1972, oil's main players have been shut out. Years of war and violence have kept them at bay.
That may be about to change. In October the Baghdad government kicked off a round of bidding to allow international oil companies to exploit eight of the country's largest oil and gasfields. BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil and Gazprom are among the 35 companies that have put concerns about security to one side and thrown their hats in the ring. The deals would pave the way for the first significant foreign investment in the country's biggest fields in more than three decades. Some side deals have already been signed - last month Shell announced a $4 billion (£2.7 billion) gas joint venture with the Iraqi government and opened a permanent office in the country.
Robert Redford has come under fire from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). In what seems like a bizarre veering off-mandate for a movie star and the civil rights group who once coordinated the Washington march led by Martin Luther King Jr, they've come to verbal blows over oil and gas drilling.
Roy Innis, national chairman of CORE said, "If Robert Redford succeeds in blocking natural gas production in Utah, it's going to hurt a lot of people on the other end of the pipeline-especially low-income families who are struggling to pay their heating bills." And apparently, the organisation is planning to protest against Redford at his own Sundance Festival.
Has CORE sold out to gas and oil?
Some critics say that CORE has moved away from its key activity because it is funded by the oil and gas industry: Exxon has provided over $250,000 to the group, but CORE says this is part of their role - or as their website says, "Under the banner of TRUTH! LOGIC! & COURAGE!, CORE continues to promote harmony and healing in all aspects of society; calling the shots straight-even when it hurts-and confronting the haters, race-baiters and racial racketeers bent on keeping us apart"
Hurricane Ike's pending assault of the Texas Gulf Coast spurred a slew of major oil refineries to shut down Thursday, stoking concerns that the lost output will further strain U.S. fuel supplies and send pump prices higher.
The closures included Exxon Mobil Corp.'s Baytown refinery and BP's Texas City plant, two of the nation's largest fuel-making facilities.
An Iraqi plan to award six no-bid contracts to Western oil companies, which came under sharp criticism from several United States senators this summer, has been withdrawn, participants in the negotiations said on Wednesday.
Iraq's oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, told reporters at an OPEC summit meeting in Vienna on Tuesday that talks with Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, Total, BP and several smaller companies for one-year deals, which were announced in June and subsequently delayed, had dragged on for so long that the companies could not now fulfill the work within that time frame. The companies confirmed on Wednesday that the deals had been canceled.
Rising fears of a global economic downturn are sinking crude oil prices and driving down the share prices of major oil companies despite the industry's record profits of the last two years.
Exxon Mobil Corp., the largest U.S. company and largest Western oil company by market capitalization, has lost 17% of its share price since January, its worst showing since 1981. Its smaller peers are doing worse. The stock prices of Chevron Corp., BP PLC, Royal Dutch ShellPLC, Total SA and ConocoPhillips, the largest western oil companies, all hit new 52-week lows during the day on Monday.
If Matt Simmons is right, the recent drop in crude prices is an illusion - and oil could be headed for the stratosphere. He's just hoping we can prevent civilization from imploding.
Matt Simmons argues that Saudi Arabia's oil supplies are much more limited than everyone thinks.
(Fortune Magazine) -- Matt Simmons is as perplexed as anyone that it has fallen to him to take on OPEC, Exxon, the Saudis, and all the other misguided defenders of conventional wisdom in the oil patch. Why should one investment banker with a penchant for research be required to point out what he regards as the obvious - that from here on out, oil supplies can't meet demand, and if we don't act soon to solve this crisis, World War III could be looming?
Under fire for high gas prices, the industry is spending record amounts on influence in Washington. Plus: How it's playing in the presidential race.
Top oil lobbyists
Company spending so far in 2008
Company Amount in millions
1. Exxon Mobil $8.1
2. Chevron $6.1
3. BP $5.2
4. ConocoPhillips $4.4
5. Koch $3.8
6. Marathon $3.6
7. API $2.2
8. Occidental $1.4
9. Williams $1.2
10. Shell $1.2
Source:Center for Responsive Politics
Top industries
Spending on lobbying so far in 2008
Industry Amount in millions
1. Drugs $113
2. Insurance $76
3. Electric utilities $65
4. Computers $60
5. Oil and gas $55
6. Education $51
7. Air transport $50
8. Health Care $48
9. Manufacturing $48
10. Entertainment $48
Source:Center for Responsive Politics
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- As angry voters spark a barrage of energy bills in Congress, the oil industry is spending record amounts of money protecting its interests.
In what may be surprising to some, the most recent figures from the Center for Responsive Politics show that the oil industry gives a relatively small sum to individual political campaigns - it's 16th on a list of top 50 industries.
"Obama tried cutting oil subsidies in his very first federal budget proposal, and it didn't fly. He and the Democratic members of Congress tried again earlier this year, hoping that the Tea Party's incessant yelling for spending cuts would translate into Congressional support for one of the most obvious spending cuts in the history of spending cuts. But no such luck.
And get this:
The true amount we pay in oil subsidies is waaaaaaaaaaaaay more than $4 billion a year. In fact, the far-right libertarian think tank the Cato Institute once calculated the true cost of subsidizing oil to be in the range of $78-150 billion -- yep, billion -- per year. A lot of these expenditures come from the massive amount of security needed to protect oil, both at its source in volatile regions and along international shipping routes 'round the world. The US gov expends much effort and capital to help safeguard the oil companies' product and operations -- it's in the national interest, after all, that everyone be able to continue purchasing Exxon gasoline.
So you'd think that paring a comparatively meager $4 billio"
ExxonMobil has pumped more than $8 million into more than 40 think tanks; media outlets; and consumer, religious, and even civil rights groups that preach skepticism about the oncoming climate catastrophe. Herewith, a representative overview.
This week global activist group Avaaz began airing a spoof ad that takes direct aim at ExxonMobil's cheery ad campaign featuring scientists talking about how they're making the clean energy of the future. A company spokesman responded to the ad: "They seem to be critical of our desire to communicate our positions on climate change, which we don't understand."
Funny -- we don't understand your position on climate change either, ExxonMobil! (zing). You say you want to make the world cleaner through chemistry, but then you lobby hard to make sure that won't happen. See the videos -- and help get Avaaz's ad on CNN -- below.