April 18, 2006
$144K a Day Pension
This fat fuck has been rewarded by ExxonMobil with a $98M pension package. My guess is that he can only pack away $225/day in fatty foods, even if it's Kobe Steak everyday. What's he going to do with the remaining $143,775 every day?
A $69.7 million compensation package and $98 million pension payout to Exxon Mobil Corp.'s former chief executive and chairman Lee R. Raymond has some shareholders and economists asking, "how much is enough?""Some folks will ask the question, 'Is this more evidence of big oil taking an enormous windfall and retaining all the riches?'" said Mel Fugate, assistant professor for Southern Methodist University's Cox School of Business.
The Irving company has drawn criticism from politicians and economists for becoming the most profitable company in history — at consumers' expense, they say.
Exxon benefited from high oil and natural gas prices and solid demand for refined products en route to earning $36 billion last year. The company has defended its profits, saying that other industries have larger profit margins but oil companies' bottom lines stand out because they operate on a much larger scale.
Recent news of Raymond's payout and pension is stoking embers Fugate said had been starting to die out. But with gasoline prices again reaching $3 a gallon at the pump in some areas and big oil companies about to report first-quarter earnings in coming weeks, expect more fallout, economists say.
On Wednesday, Exxon reported executive compensation in a regulatory filing that showed Raymond receiving $48.5 million in salary, bonuses, incentive payments and stock awards.
His compensation package also included $21.2 million from exercising stock options, which the company stopped awarding in 2001.
His $98 million pension payout reflects 43 years of service. But he would have received nearly $17 million less had he retired just last year, according to the company's 2005 proxy statement.
Read the story here.
Posted by Steven at 12:08 AM | Comments (0)
October 13, 2005
Vindicated, Part II
The EPA lists my and my wife's cars as the third and fourth most fuel efficient vehicles in a new report that is receiving a lot of attention in this new energy crisis state.
Diesel-powered cars from Volkswagen took the top spots in the "compact" and "sub-compact" car categories. The diesel VW Beetle with manual transmission is the most efficient sub-compact and the VW Golf diesel, which is built on the same vehicle structure as the Beetle, is the most efficient compact. Both get an estimated 44 mpg on the highway and 37 in the city.The Beetle and Golf tied for third in overall mileage rankings.
Bosney's Honda Insight and my father's Toyota Prius fill out the #1 and #2 slots. In your face, Hummer.
Posted by Steven at 10:57 AM | Comments (0)
September 25, 2005
Did We Attack Iraq to Strengthen the Petrodollar?
Oil is traded in American dollars, regardless of where it is produced or refined. This fact alone gives the United States a huge currency advantage, as our currency reflect the base-price of energy around the world. What if that were to change? Not a few number of economists have noted that a shift to euros would destabilize the USD tremendously, possibly leading to a currency crisis. Most of our foreign debt is to non-energy producing nations, who would have to start translating dollars into euros to buy energy, which would smash our bond market.
An analysis of this is found in this month's Media Monitors online magazine.
It is now obvious the invasion of Iraq had less to do with any threat from Saddam's long-gone WMD program and certainly less to do to do with fighting International terrorism than it has to do with gaining strategic control over Iraq's hydrocarbon reserves and in doing so maintain the U.S. dollar as the monopoly currency for the critical international oil market. Throughout 2004 information provided by former administration insiders revealed the Bush/Cheney administration entered into office with the intention of toppling Saddam.[1][2] Candidly stated, 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' was a war designed to install a pro-U.S. government in Iraq, establish multiple U.S military bases before the onset of global Peak Oil, and to reconvert Iraq back to petrodollars while hoping to thwart further OPEC momentum towards the euro as an alternative oil transaction currency ( i.e. "petroeuro").[3] However, subsequent geopolitical events have exposed neoconservative strategy as fundamentally flawed, with Iran moving towards a petroeuro system for international oil trades, while Russia evaluates this option with the European Union.In 2003 the global community witnessed a combination of petrodollar warfare and oil depletion warfare. The majority of the world's governments – especially the E.U., Russia and China – were not amused – and neither are the U.S. soldiers who are currently stationed inside a hostile Iraq. In 2002 I wrote an award-winning online essay that asserted Saddam Hussein sealed his fate when he announced on September 2000 that Iraq was no longer going to accept dollars for oil being sold under the UN's Oil-for-Food program, and decided to switch to the euro as Iraq's oil export currency.[4] Indeed, my original pre-war hypothesis was validated in a Financial Times article dated June 5, 2003, which confirmed Iraqi oil sales returning to the international markets were once again denominated in U.S. dollars – not euros.
The tender, for which bids are due by June 10, switches the transaction back to dollars -- the international currency of oil sales - despite the greenback's recent fall in value. Saddam Hussein in 2000 insisted Iraq's oil be sold for euros, a political move, but one that improved Iraq's recent earnings thanks to the rise in the value of the euro against the dollar. [5]
The Bush administration implemented this currency transition despite the adverse impact on profits from Iraqi's export oil sales.[6] (In mid-2003 the euro was valued approx. 13% higher than the dollar, and thus significantly impacted the ability of future oil proceeds to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure). Not surprisingly, this detail has never been mentioned in the five U.S. major media conglomerates who control 90% of information flow in the U.S., but confirmation of this vital fact provides insight into one of the crucial – yet overlooked – rationales for 2003 the Iraq war.
Posted by Steven at 01:07 PM | Comments (1)
September 02, 2005
Gas Blows Past $3/gal.
Today in McKinney, TX, the price of regular gas hovered around $3.07 and premium $3.27. The weekend has not even started yet, folks.
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 | Last week's Frontline "The House of Saud" is a two-hour tour de force exploring the first hundred years of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Visit the PBS site to see the program, and experience the extended interviews. |
Posted by Steven at 08:05 PM | Comments (0)
"No Mullah Left Behind"
SUVs Funding Iran Nukes. Tom Friedman of The New York Times states in his editorial that the Bush Administration has inadvertantly funded the conservative Mullahs of Iran's nuclear weapons program with their unbridled oil price strategy.
The Wall Street Journal ran a very, very alarming article from Iran on its front page last Tuesday. The article explained how the mullahs in Tehran - who are now swimming in cash thanks to soaring oil prices - rather than begging foreign investors to come into Iran, are now shunning some of them. The article related how a Turkish mobile-phone operator, which had signed a deal with the Iranian government to launch Iran's first privately owned cellphone network, had the contract frozen by the mullahs in the Iranian Parliament because they were worried it might help the Turks and their foreign partners spy on Iran.The Journal quoted Ali Ansari, an Iran specialist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, as saying that for 10 years analysts had been writing about Iran's need for economic reform. "In actual fact, the scenario is worse now," said Mr. Ansari. "They have all this money with the high oil price, and they don't need to do anything about reforming the economy." Indeed, The Journal added, the conservative mullahs are feeling even more emboldened to argue that with high oil prices, Iran doesn't need Western investment capital and should feel "free to pursue its nuclear power program without interference."
This is a perfect example of the Bush energy policy at work, and the Bush energy policy is: "No Mullah Left Behind."
By adamantly refusing to do anything to improve energy conservation in America, or to phase in a $1-a-gallon gasoline tax on American drivers, or to demand increased mileage from Detroit's automakers, or to develop a crash program for renewable sources of energy, the Bush team is - as others have noted - financing both sides of the war on terrorism. We are financing the U.S. armed forces with our tax dollars, and, through our profligate use of energy, we are generating huge windfall profits for Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan, where the cash is used to insulate the regimes from any pressure to open up their economies, liberate their women or modernize their schools, and where it ends up instead financing madrassas, mosques and militants fundamentally opposed to the progressive, pluralistic agenda America is trying to promote. Now how smart is that?
Posted by Steven at 07:52 PM | Comments (0)
February 08, 2005
Big Pickups Pickup in Sales
Yeh-hah, ride 'em cowboy. The New York Times is running a disturbing article about large pickup sales. Apparently, Americans, and Texans in particular, are buying the largest pickups instead of SUVs, in ever larger numbers. In effect, the "drove" turns out to be a Dodge RAM (e.g. "they're buying them in droves...").
S.U.V. sales continued to grow last year as buyers sought smaller-size models. But sales of larger S.U.V.'s like the Ford Explorer, Hummer H2 and Chevy Suburban appear to have reached a plateau.And for the first time in a decade, the sales growth of full-size pickup trucks outpaced the growth of S.U.V.'s over all, according to an analysis by the Ford Motor Company. Sales of full-size pickups rose 6.6 percent last year from 2003, compared with overall S.U.V. sales growth of 4.3 percent, Ward's AutoInfoBank data shows.
What is more, American buyers seem to want their big pickups bigger and more S.U.V.-like. They are mostly buying trucks with seating for the family, instead of the two-seat work trucks that were standard a decade ago. And while several automakers say that concern over high gasoline prices is starting to influence prospective purchasers of sport utility vehicles, pickup truck buyers generally want the biggest truck they can afford.
"How can I say it - guys will be guys," said George Pipas, Ford's chief industry sales analyst. "This is a guy thing. It's like N.F.L. football. That's why we advertise so much during N.F.L. games."
While environmentalists and safety advocates have long trained their ire on the S.U.V., the growth in popularity of the full-size pickup truck, which has risen to 15 percent of new vehicle sales in the last dozen years from 8.5 percent, has been another culprit in the nation's swelling dependence on foreign oil.
The average pickup truck has become 40 percent heavier in the last two decades and 11 percent less fuel-efficient, according to estimates by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Big pickup trucks are an even more formidable threat to people in cars than the largest S.U.V.'s, according to statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Fatality rates for the occupants of large pickup trucks are modestly higher than those for other family vehicles like large cars and minivans because of the trucks' increased rollover risk, a government crash study in 2003 indicated.
On Wednesday at the Chicago Auto Show, DaimlerChrysler is planning to introduce one of the largest passenger cabs yet as an option on its full-size pickup truck, the Dodge Ram. The new cabin, to be called the Mega Cab, is 20 inches longer than the largest Ram passenger cab now.
Weighing in at more than three tons unloaded, the Ram Mega Cab seats six and joins a group of new passenger trucks that are so heavy that they fall outside federal fuel economy regulations for most other passenger vehicles. The makers are not even required to post mileage figures on a window sticker.
Unlike some more exotic giant pickups, like the new 18-wheeler-size CXT from International Truck and Engine, the Dodge Ram Mega Cab will be positioned as a mass-market product. Chrysler executives estimate that they can sell 50,000 to 100,000 of them a year, according to a person close to the company's planning.
"There's overwhelming desire for it; there has been for several years now," said Hayden Elder, a Dodge dealer in Athens, Tex., near Dallas. "We could probably sell everything they can build just in Texas."
Yeah, that's most sickening thing about this article ... one quarter of all of these behomeths will be sold in Dallas, San Antonio and Houston, to people who will drive them to work, typically in twenty-plus mile commutes, day after day. These vehicles will add vast quantities of pollution to the already filthy air of these cities, and crush and destroy (in accidents) who-knows how many passenger cars, all because of the endemically small penis size of the average Texan male.
Posted by Steven at 08:22 AM | Comments (0)
January 10, 2005
University of Toronto Hearlds Solar Cell Breakthrough
U of T has announced a breakthrough in solar cell technology.
Researchers at the University of Toronto have invented an infrared-sensitive material that's five times more efficient at turning the sun's power into electrical energy than current methods.The discovery could lead to shirts and sweaters capable of recharging our cellphones and other wireless devices, said Ted Sargent, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the university.
Sargent and other researchers combined specially-designed minute particles called quantum dots, three to four nanometres across, with a polymer to make a plastic that can detect energy in the infrared.
Infrared light is not visible to the naked eye but it is what most remote controls emit, in small amounts, to control devices such as TVs and DVD players.
It also contains a huge untapped resource -- despite the surge in popularity of solar cells in the 1990s, we still miss half of the sun's power, Sargent said.
"In fact, there's enough power from the sun hitting the Earth every day to supply all the world's needs for energy 10,000 times over,'' Sargent said in a phone interview Sunday from Boston. He is currently a visiting professor of nanotechnology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Sargent said the new plastic composite is, in layman's terms, a layer of film that "catches'' solar energy. He said the film can be applied to any device, much like paint is coated on a wall.
"We've done the same thing, but not with something that just sit there on the wall the way paint does,'' said the Ottawa native.
"We've done it to make a device which actually harnesses the power in the room in the infrared.''
The film can convert up to 30 per cent of the sun's power into usable, electrical energy. Today's best plastic solar cells capture only about six per cent.
In the Seventies, efficiency of this magnitude was considered the rate that was required to make this technology competitive with oil, which was still priced lower than today. Maybe there is hope for the energy future afterall.
Posted by Steven at 03:31 PM | Comments (0)
January 05, 2005
Kunstler's 2005 predictions
Jim Kunstler's blog, Clusterfuck Nation, is a good read if you haven't seen it before. Check out some of his most recent entries.
Posted by at 01:52 PM | Comments (0)
December 23, 2004
China Competing with U.S. for Canadian Oil
China is positioning itself to be the major player against the U.S. and is now competing for Calgary oil.
Chinese energy companies are on the verge of striking ambitious deals in Canada in efforts to win access to some of the most prized oil reserves in North America.The deals may create unease for the first time since the 1970's in the traditionally smooth energy relationship between the United States and Canada.
Canada, the largest source of imported oil for the United States, has historically sent almost all its exports of oil south by pipeline to help quench America's thirst for energy. But that arrangement may be about to change as China, which has surpassed Japan as the second-largest market for oil, flexes its muscle in attempts to secure oil, even in places like the cold boreal forests of northern Alberta, where the oil has to be sucked out of the sticky, sandy soil.
Posted by Steven at 08:47 AM | Comments (0)
October 20, 2004
Diesel Hits $2.50
I dropped $2.50 a gallon to fuel up my Golf TDI tonite. I'm still getting 45 MPG, but it's now over $30 to fillup. Gasoline is creeping up, too, with hi-test at $2.35 and the "cheap stuff" at $2.03 to $2.10. We're still waiting for $58/bbl. oil, but maybe that's Rove's October Surprise.
Posted by Steven at 11:40 PM | Comments (0)
October 18, 2004
Oil Breaks $55
From Salon:
Crude oil prices surged past an unprecedented $55 per barrel Monday as uncertainty swirls over production, high demand and tight global supplies.Crude for November delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit $55.33 per barrel around noon in Asia, up 40 cents from its Friday settlement price.
The prices are the highest in a generation and while oil is more than 70 percent higher than a year ago, they are still around $25 below the peak inflation-adjusted price reached in 1981.
Crude prices have skyrocketed more than $10 in the past month, primarily over production delays in the Gulf of Mexico, where Hurricane Ivan hit mid-September.
Now that the $55 barrier has been surpassed, analysts are looking toward $60 a barrel, with some saying it may reach that mark by the end of the year -- smack in the middle of the Northern Hemisphere winter.
"We hit the new milestone and we're looking at $60," said Victor Shum, oil analyst at Texas-headquartered energy consultants Purvin & Gertz. "$60 is certainly feasible."
We're sticking by our $58/bbl. on 11-2 prediction. It's looking less and less like a guess.
Posted by Steven at 09:08 AM | Comments (0)
October 11, 2004
Oil Still Rising
Just a quick reminder -- oil still rising in price, hitting $53.56 today.
$58/bbl. oil is still a safe prediction on or by Nov. 2.
Posted by Steven at 08:39 AM | Comments (0)
Carbon Dioxide Levels Accelerating
Global Warming, George Bush (noted scientist) declares, is "bad science". The Earth has responded in kind by refusing to store any more of his CO2 emissions, according to the Guardian.
An unexplained and unprecedented rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere two years running has raised fears that the world may be on the brink of runaway global warming.Scientists are baffled why the quantity of the main greenhouse gas has leapt in a two-year period and are concerned that the Earth's natural systems are no longer able to absorb as much as in the past.
Again, we are forced to remind our good readers living near ocean borders to rethink their 30 year mortgages.
Posted by Steven at 08:34 AM | Comments (0)
October 07, 2004
Oil Watch: $53/bbl. And Rising
Jesus. Oil's going up a dollar a day this week. It (briefly) broke $53 today.
Oil prices scaled new heights at $53 for U.S. crude Thursday on concerns over tight winter heating fuel supplies and an unexpected strike at Nigerian oil terminals.U.S. light crude set a record at $53 a barrel -- marking a surge of $20, or more than 60 percent, this year -- before settling at $52.67 for a gain of 65 cents. London crude also struck a new peak, at $49.20 a barrel, before ending at $48.90 a barrel, up 91 cents.
"Where it ends, who knows?" said Jan Stuart, an analyst with Fimat USA. "What's going to happen when the winter hits? I'd say we have a better than fifty-fifty chance of hitting $60 by year end."
Posted by Steven at 07:31 PM | Comments (0)
October 06, 2004
Oil Breaks $52/bbl.
Good God. Bush is running neck-and-neck for office, while oil surges above $50/bbl. Shouldn't he be facing a five to ten point deficit thanks to this price for fuel? I've watched diesel go from $1.99 to $2.19 in a couple of weeks in Massachusetts ... and gasoline will be surging within the month, too. Don't you people drive SUVs? Doesn't this fly in the face of the unspoken assumptions of the War in Iraq? Are you all insane?
BTW, energy experts are talking $55/bbl. oil before the election now. I'm going to go out on a pretty firm limb and call oil at $59/bbl. the week of the election. The $60 mark is psychologically out there but within grasp now.
Posted by Steven at 11:50 PM | Comments (0)
October 02, 2004
$50
Oil closed above $50/bbl. today.
Remember this day, the day SUVs became liabilities instead of luxuries.
Posted by Steven at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)
September 28, 2004
$50 Oil is Here (To Stay)
Oil closed at $49.64 yesterday and broke $50/bbl. in after hours trading as fears of a war in Nigeria, coupled with the Gulf of Mexico production shutdown thanks to a near-Biblical swarm of hurricanes (is anyone who believes in this paying attention?) this month, combined to drive production down to dangerously low levels. Across the US, regular gas now averages $1.97 but most people are paying more than $2/gal. and there will probably never be a lower price. Filling up a Chevy Suburban now costs $100 for most Americans. Now do you feel the burn?
Update
Oil traded at $50.47 overnight. $50 oil is in the house.
Read more at the WaPo story.
Posted by Steven at 08:09 AM | Comments (0)
September 24, 2004
Hope Your SUV is a Sub
Hey residents of Miami, New Orleans, and New York City who drive SUVs and light trucks. Good news. An irreversable melting of the Antartic galciers has begun and you can kiss your cities good bye in a few decades.
Spurred by warming coastal air and waters, some of Antarctica's glaciers have accelerated their seaward march, fresh observations show, suggesting that ocean levels might be irreversibly on the rise for centuries to come.
Hope you like spending billions on dykes and other temporary measures keeping the oceans from drowning your homes. You've already spent billions killing thousands of Middle Easterners taking the mineral resources under their feet so you can ride a few feet higher off the ground, instead of heeding the warnings back in 1979 and learning to use your technological advantage to avoid this problem entirely.
"Nice shoot'n, Tex!", is all I can say.
Posted by Steven at 08:10 AM | Comments (0)
September 14, 2004
Hummer Dinger
Apparently, some guys feel so inadequate that even the mighty Hummer H1 isn't big enough to soothe their fragile egos. Now you can get the CXT, a 12 ton "pickup" truck based on a commerical dump truck frame.
Called CXT, for commercial extreme truck, it dwarfs the beefy Hummer H2 sport-utility pickup and even could call the hulking H1 military version "junior."The CXT is 2 feet taller, 4½ feet longer, twice as heavy and totes more than five times the cargo weight of H2. "You can put the Hummer in back and take it with you," quips Nick Matich, vice president at International Truck and Engine.
It's also about twice the price of H2, about the same as H1. It starts at $93,000, runs $105,000 typically equipped and tops out at $115,000 with DVD player, leather upholstery, tilting dump box and rear-view camera.
Playboy Magazine used to (famously) ask "What sort of man reads Playboy?" This begs the question, "How small does your penis have to be to want this?"
Posted by Steven at 03:59 PM | Comments (2)