Conoco Phillips

About Those Big Bad Oil Companies . . .

by Marlo Lewis on May 26, 2011

in Blog, Features

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On May 17, the Senate voted 52-48 for S. 940, the Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act, sponsored by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.). The bill would selectively hike taxes on the nation’s five largest oil companies (Chevron, Shell, BP America, Conoco Phillips, and ExxonMobil).

The bill failed of passage, falling eight votes short of the 60 required to overcome a filibuster.

But that was just one skirmish in the protracted political war against U.S. energy production. A majority of Senators voted for the bill and gasoline prices could hit new highs in the summer driving season. So expect more anti-oil demagoguery from the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body in the very near future.

Demagogues feed and exploit public ignorance and frustration. Nobody likes paying $4.00 a gallon for gas, and self-styled progressive politicians, pundits, and activists claim Big Oil is “price gouging,” reaping “windfall profits,” and not paying their “fair share” of taxes. They claim we’d all feel less pain at the pump if Big Oil felt more pain on April 15. This popular narrative has no basis in fact or economic logic. [click to continue…]

Al Gore: the Gift that Keeps on Giving

by Myron Ebell on August 17, 2010

in Blog, Politics

Former Vice President Al Gore is the gift that keeps on giving to opponents of global warming alarmism and energy rationing policies. He leads what I think of as the Dream Team: Gore is the public leader; James Hansen is the go-to scientist; Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) pushed through a cap-and-trade bill in the House that killed cap-and-trade; Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was the main promoter in the Senate; when he dropped the ball, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) was in charge for awhile; and she has now been replaced by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) with help from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

I used to think that we were just incredibly lucky that the alarmist movement was led by this group of second raters.   I now realize that it isn’t luck.  Global warming alarmism attracts incompetents, know-nothings, and looney tunes.

We have missed Al Gore in the debate, but luckily Kerry and Graham were fully up to sinking cap-and-trade in the Senate (not that it had much chance anyway) without any help from the leader of the forces of darkness. So it was good to see that Gore returned this week on a conference call sponsored by Repower America (aka the Alliance for Climate Protection).

Gore on the conference call acknowledged that cap-and-trade was dead and that the alarmists had lost in 2010.  He bitterly blamed the usual suspects: Big Oil, King Coal, right-wing media, and professional deniers (I believe that is where he would put me and CEI).  This is boilerplate nonsense.  Three of the big five oil companies (BP, Shell, and Conoco Phillips) support cap-and-trade, as well as most of the big electric utilities (Duke Energy, P G and E, Exelon, PNM Resources, Entergy, etc.) and many other major corporations, such as General Electric, Dow Chemical, General Motors, and Ford Motor.  Cap-and-trade died when the American people found out that it was a colossal transfer of wealth from them to corporate special interests (see the list in the previous sentence).

Gore even said that our system of government was not working as the founders intended it to work.  In fact, in the debate over cap-and-trade the system of checks and balances in the Constitution is working exactly as the founders intended.  It has prevented an elite from hijacking the economy for its own enrichment.

I can see why Gore is bitter.  His comparatively modest investments in green energy promised to make him a global warming billionaire if cap-and-trade were enacted. Unluckily for him, the American people have said no emphatically.

[This was originally posted on Politico’s Energy Arena here.]

Cap and Trade is Dead: Let’s Hear It for BP, Conoco, and Caterpillar

by Myron Ebell on February 17, 2010

in Politics

The coalition of major corporations hoping to get rich off cap-and-trade legislation started to crack up yesterday when BP America, Conoco Phillips, and Caterpillar dropped out of the U. S. Climate Action Partnership (or US CAP ).  Their defections end the exceedingly small remaining chance that cap-and-trade could be enacted this year.

BP America and Conoco Phillips did not pull out because they realized that the Climategate scientific fraud scandal has revealed that global warming alarmism is based on junk science.  Nor did they pull out because they finally recognized that energy-rationing policies will wreck the U. S. economy.   They pulled out when it became clear that they were not going to get rich off the backs of American consumers if the cap-and-trade bill enacted is anything like the specific bills being considered in Congress.

The Waxman-Markey bill that the House passed last June by a 219 to 212 vote and the Kerry-Boxer bill introduced in the Senate would, as intended by US CAP, raise energy prices for consumers through the roof.  Unfortunately for BP America and Conoco Phillips, the primary beneficiaries of this multi-trillion dollar wealth transfer from consumers to big business would be electric utilities and General Electric.

In other words, the two oil companies lost the political pushing and shoving match to James Rogers of Duke Energy and Jeffrey Immelt of GE.  That’s no surprise: Immelt has been driving GE into the ground ever since he took over, but he’s a savvy political operator; and Rogers learned how to get to the government trough first from the master, Ken Lay of Enron.  It is worth recalling that Enron Corporation was the leading promoter of the Kyoto Protocol and cap-and-trade before it went spectacularly bankrupt.

Caterpillar’s case is different.  As the major manufacturer of heavy equipment used in coal mining, Caterpillar must have been asleep when they joined US CAP.  The National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project has been gently shaking Caterpillar’s top executives for several years, and perhaps they finally woke up.

So cap-and-trade is dead.   But other piecemeal energy-rationing policies are still very much alive.  The Environmental Protection Agency is going ahead with regulating greenhouse gas emissions using the Clean Air Act.  Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is working with Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) on a “compromise” package that can gain bi-partisan support.  Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) has passed a renewable electricity requirement and new building energy efficiency standards out of his committee.

And big corporations are still circling the trough.   By my count, US CAP still has twenty-three corporate members plus eight environmental pressure groups that front for big business.  And of course, BP America, Conoco Phillips, Caterpillar, and many other companies that don’t belong to US CAP still hope to make money off the “right” sort of policies to raise energy prices.

The good news is that public opinion has turned decisively against global warming alarmism and energy-rationing.  People have figured out that they, not big business special interests, will end up paying the bills when energy prices, in President Obama’s elegant formulation, “necessarily skyrocket.”  In the November elections, the American people have a lot more votes than James Rogers of Duke Energy or Jim Mulva of Conoco Phillips.