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Dutch IGCC pioneers chalk up pain and gain Emergency response is behind schedule in the European public sector A new refining industry in Europe's Asian Corridor Commission proposes milestone energy proposal Replace fuel oil with distillate? Cancelled projects will sustain margins “Marine distillate not fuel oil from 2010” Branson's biofuels megastore You heard it here first: refinery CO2 storage a reality in Norway Buncefield 2: Investigation critical Where now for Swedish Class 1 diesel My slow awakening to climate change The luckiest motorist alive Safety row goes on over Europe's largest LNG terminal New WHO guidelines on city air quality put focus on diesel Would LNG really 'evaporate harmlessly' in an accident? Another lesson in the thermobaric bomb Spare a thought for the oil-rich But will the good times keep on rolling? Carbon storage and the zero emissions refinery Everything just changed E85 and high octane gasolines The problem of small-minded young engineers New Permit Regulations Biodiesel newbuilds and a new green superfuel Spilled wine and our split industry Drilling down into the prospects for IGCC The beginning of the start of the end of oil | Spilled wine and our split industry The top tier of oil majors held a fairly united front almost to the end over the Clean Air Act and Auto Oil, but the split in our industry has never been so marked as it is today over climate change. Now that split is being brought into greater public focus by some largely dramatic and some genuinely historic events, played out over recent weeks in the heart of the European industry. Last week (as I write), a pressure group stormed into the London International Petroleum Exchange and stopped open outcry oil trading. Later that day the same group, Greenpeace UK, delayed and then interrupted the gala dinner of International Petroleum Week (about which, more later) with a combination of protester cordons and besuited, counterfeit dinner guests. The latter heckled Exxon Mobil’s Chairman and CEO. Now, if Lee Raymond’s your boss, I’m not saying it wasn’t rude to heckle him at the dinner and spill wine over six tables. But whether or not history will judge these protests as misguided or well-founded depends on whether the grounds for a global treaty ratified by 141 nations which came into force on the same day turn out to be valid. The treaty I mention is of course the Kyoto Protocol, which binds 35 of the world’s richest countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions on average by 5.2% below the level of their emissions in 1990 before 2012. International Petroleum Week had already been planned for 18 months before Russia finally ratified Kyoto and paved the way for the 16 February entry into force. The organisers realised that an already standing invitation to Lee Raymond to speak would mean they’d need beefed up security for their dinner, which was by then already planned for the same day. Now other companies like Shell have in the past received plenty of attention from Greenpeace and the like, but on the issue of climate change, there’s no doubt at all which company is the target of the environmentalists. Why, when we all make and sell the same commodity, does Exxon Mobil – surely the most energy efficient of companies, engender such venom from the environmentalists, indeed, the moniker “Climate Criminal Number One”? This had already been going on for a while when I first heard Lee Raymond speak five years ago at the same event, albeit Institute of Petroleum Week back then. He opened then by saying: “For those of you who don’t know me, I’m the one whose picture is on all the demonstrators’ placards you passed as you came in.” This time he called for realism over energy and alternatives to hydrocarbons. He wanted costs kept low for oil exploration and production companies on the UK Continental Shelf (that is, taxes low). And he made his key comments about the cusp of change being visited on the UK as it for the first time this year becomes a net importer of natural gas (something I mentioned last month). The phoney guests who’d apparently paid £250 per head for their short stay did their heckling as Raymond rose to speak and were speedily ejected. Nothing that Lee Raymond said would be called into question by bp or Shell, and when the Shell non-exec Chairman, Lord Oxburgh, recently spoke in London on climate change, two Exxon Mobil employees got up to say they would disagree with nothing Lord Oxburgh said. Add to this that Exxon Mobil is investing $100 million in Stanford University’s Global Climate and Energy research project and you may well ask: “where’s the rift?” Well, to be honest, I’ve struggled to understand this for myself over the years that I’ve covered these companies. Exxon Mobil funds GW Bush’s election campaigns and those of other Republicans and lots of researchers and institutions that end up doing quite a lot of lobbying against action on climate change apparently receive funding from Exxon Mobil. So what, the US is a free country. I think what damns the world’s most profitable company in the eyes of many, especially young, people in Europe is not what they do say, or even what they may do that they don’t say they do (Now I sound like Donald Rumsfeld). It’s what they don’t say. They’re the world’s biggest, most highly valued, most impressive organisation in many ways, and that adds up to a lot of leadership. And what they don’t say is, we back Kyoto. Do Shell and BP? Yes, they do. A big yes. Look at these comments from Shell’s non-executive Chairman, Lord Oxburgh. “It is essential that governments then set a regulatory and economic and taxation framework in which these things can happen.” These things? “I think there is no doubt that if you want to look at this in straight economic terms, it's less expensive to respond to climate change than to ignore it. We know that infrastructure changes slowly. We can't achieve miracles, but the slower that things change, the more important it is to make an early start. None of this will happen without really determined government action.” Lord Oxburgh says Shell has nothing to fear from determined and increasing taxation of carbon dioxide emissions. When he made his comments – to the Greenpeace Business Forum(!) in January – he was at pains to make clear that these were his own views, not official Shell policy. He went on to call on a direct tax or CO2 emission trading on jet fuel. The ideological split that divides us today is not in my opinion about the environment in any case. It’s a clash of the relativists versus the stakeholder analysts. In the relativist view, exemplified by Milton Friedman, and in this case, Lee Raymond, the market must be allowed to prevail since it is the best mechanism to create affluence, and the very ability to contemplate environmentalism is subject to the wealth that affords food, warmth, education, democracy and freedom. Besides, says Friedman, who are business people to dictate social responsibilities… we have politicians for that. This line of reasoning, I’d suggest, is why Exxon Mobil wants to get on with providing energy and creating wealth unfettered by Kyoto. In stakeholder analysis, business leaders figure out their ‘social responsibilities’ by drawing a table with the stakeholders along the top (employees, communities, the environment etc) and down the side write first harms and benefits, and then rights and responsibilities. Stakeholder analysis is a popular component of the business school syllabus and interestingly, it was to his Alma Mater at Stanford Business School that Lord John Browne first announced his support for the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. Lee Raymond is a Chemical Engineering PhD. • Congratulations, by the way, to International Petroleum Week (ipweek.co.uk), which under the newly merged Energy Institute and its imaginative Chief Executive, Louise Kingham, seems to be coming of age. Thanks to Louise for providing a view from the top table of the events at the Dorchester. And good luck to the meeting which this year had many more international visitors among the 2,000 participants, including 100 Russian delegates. | |||||||
Download Energy Industry Resumé with work samples Profile: Tim Lloyd Wright MA Here you'll find a brief profile of my work with international energy, transport and associated environmental issues. Energy trends articles You heard it here first: refinery CO2 storage a reality in Norway From the archive... Over-processed fuel leaves oil tankers adrift | ||||||||
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