Well, sort of. The awl bidness has had a few tough decades, three in a row to be honest and the striking back at the world is mostly about getting the facts out in the air so the abuse might get controlled and a little support displaces the disinformation campaigns of a long list of detractors. On the other hand, I willingly admit that I abuse ‘em myself. I have willfully tried to get rises and responses and have some success. The bidness is after all, people, like you and me. The Blowback from the most recent abuse hurled has gotten a response. Awful civilized, informative, not a evil thought in sight.

Jane Van Ryan at the American Petroleum Institute has set up a series of mostly independently sourced charts and graphs with a minimum of text that sets out a third party source of basic information about the state of the awl bidness. Available as a pdf for easy relaxed reviewing and saving or passing along, it offers 33 charts and graphs. Each one answers a common question or replies to commonly used disinformation statements made in the press, by agitators and exploited by politicians. As consumers with rather large personal investments in fuel using machines, these matters are lots more important that we usually allow for time to investigate.

Who Owns “Big Oil”?

That’s why I’m posting about Jane’s effort and result. 33 sounds like a lot, but when you think back over all the issues that have been raised about the oil business 33 sounds about right. Its thorough, but reads really fast, because the data is displayed rather than explained or justified in great detail. I’m sure the order was carefully thought through, but I’m showing the ownership first. The awl bidness is us.

Impactors on the Price of Crude Oil

The other leading topic covered is a graphic that lists out the causes of the oil price run up over the past two years. One of the common hits here is page about the price increase and the graph that Jane uses while simple is pretty complete.

Industry Earnings 3rd Qtr 2007

Another topic is about how rich the empire is. It is a huge business, with incredible sums of money involved, but the money left to pay out to investors is well, nothing to get excited about, even a little disappointing.

Big Oil’s Share of World Oil Reserves

The information everyone needs to get are the facts about who owns the oil in the ground that is pumped out for us to use. The Independent Oil Companies that the press, agitators and politicians abuse with such imperious resolve isn’t even 6% of the whole. Big Oil, (we stockholders and customers actually) are being held for ransom by foreign governments that care not one wit about people, not even their own.

This is just a small sample of what Jane has compiled and formed for us to use. There is much more in the pdf and when you click over to the public information site energytomorrow.org they even added an interview to listen to. But the meat, the fast coverage is in the pdf, which I strongly recommend seeing and keeping.

We beat on Big Oil here too. Not the way others do, rather the goal is to get the Big Oil Eye on the long-term prize. Oil is a result of heat and or pressure on organic materials that can be plant, animal or man made product based. We’ve been drilling out mostly plant based petroleum that was CO2 reformed millions of years ago by plants in a CO2 rich environment. Taking advantage of the disinformation about global warming based on CO2 offers humanity a chance to add current resources to ancient resources. That scenario adds a huge worldwide growth spurt, increased wealth and improved living standards. It should also pull the rug out from under the manipulators that have run up the prices.

Even that will only buy time, people tend to beget more and more people using more and more energy, but the time will give the solar based, geothermal based and atomic fission and nuclear fusion research and development folks time to displace chemical fuels. We consumers need time and better ideas of which way to spend for personal transport, heating and cooling and a wealth of tools to do work and improve life.

The tide is turning, Chevron and Weyerhaeuser are looking into fuels from forestry land, Conoco, Phillips 76 is already working at recycling waste animal products, Shell is working at algae production. These are still small projects, we’re going to need to encourage more and as what works becomes known press for larger investments. The Independent Oil Companies also need assured that most of us are not going to abandon them, leaving them vulnerable to being picked to pieces by agitators and politicians.

The best defense is to inform us and ask for support which is what the pdf and supporting video do. After all, they are us, and we owe it to ourselves to be correctly informed. We are also obligated to expect the companies to get a move on into a much wider resource base than multi million year old goo and add some current state of the art high tech and quickly!


Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. Rod Adams on April 5, 2008 7:35 PM

    When I talk about the interests of the oil industry I do not separate the extraction and refining companies – “Big Oil” – from the state or dictator owners of the ultimate resource.

    Though I have owned stock in certain production companies, I have no interests at all in common with the Russian government, the Iranian government, the Saudi government, the Nigerian government or the Venezuelan government. The wealth that those governments have gained in the past 7-8 years because of our addiction to the benefits of the product that they own have put our security at risk.

    The beef that I have with “Big Oil” is that they are willing participants in maintaining the world’s addiction to oil. Though the money that they pay out to stockholders is not insignificant, the company leaders have given themselves fabulous salaries for the act of genuflecting to dictators in negotiating for rights to extract oil.

    I would feel a lot better if they were putting their resources to work in developing fission power – a proven alternative that reduces the need to burn oil – instead of science projects with weak energy sources like animal waste products.

Name (required)

Email (required)

Website

Speak your mind

css.php