7 ms·

An utterly crushing day for Big Oil

46 points by chha 5y ago

diveanon 5y ago
Its a shame that we rely on the markets to enforce what should be enforced by the UN. Climate change is a global problem that capitalism is responsible largely for, asking capitalism to solve it is unrealistic at best.
madaxe_again 5y ago
If any of this actually sticks. I can see the judgment against shell going through appeals processes for decades, during which it’ll be business as usual. If the appeals don’t look to be going well, they’ll replace the government and the judiciary as necessary, and will try again. Chevron and Exxon, the proof will be in the pudding, but it just smells like so much greenwashing right now.
LeCow 5y ago
Lol good luck, shareholders/executives don't care because tomorrow everyone's going to use their cars, have their goods shipped by tankers and Tweet on their plastic covered phones. Everyone in society decides whether or not a business/industry succeeds or fails. Not a Twitter mob.
- asdff 5y ago
  You hardly have a choice to avoid the plastic crap in life. You can't even buy salami without it being packaged in plastic. No sense in putting the onus on the consumer, when it was industry looking to cut costs who set up this environment in the first place.
  - wiz21c 5y ago
    Naaahhh you didn't get it. They do it because the consumer (you, me) ask for the convenience of those packages. </cynical>
    - Sabinus 5y ago
      If, say, the price of plastics rises to account for legally mandated recycling and disposal efforts, then plastic use will fall despite demand for convenience of plastic packaging.
    - Arnt 5y ago
      Close, but you confuse these emissions with those. Shell pumps oil out of the ground, refines it, transports and sells it, and that oil eventually becomes your emissions and mine. But Shell's production also causes emissions that it controls. IIRC (from very fuzzy memory), if Shell does what the court says, its production-related emissions will be <10% of what its customers emit using what Shell sells them.
    - KozmoNau7 5y ago
      They do it because convenience sells and because marketing has indoctrinated us to constantly desire Fresh! New! Pristine! Shiny! products. Using plastic is the cheapest way for them to do it, since they don't care about the externalities and don't have to pay for the long-term damage they cause. The solution is regulation. Make the manufacturers bear the costs of responsibly handling every bit of waste they produce, every bit of plastic. Make them responsible for taking back their waste, perhaps with a deposit system like on empty bottles. This will make them reduce their use of plastic packaging, in favor of better designed and actually biodegradable/reusable packaging. And follow up hard to make sure they actually meet their promises, and don't just ship it all to a third-world country, because they will do that, given the chance.
    - marcus_holmes 5y ago
      Consumers wanted CFC's in our fridges too.
- yunohn 5y ago
  > Not a Twitter mob. This post is a Tweet, indeed. But it discusses 3 real world, substantial changes like court rulings, board changes, and fines.
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
Chevron thing was meaningless. The Shell decision is material, but subject to appeal [1]. The ExxonMobil vote is permanent and unprecedented. (It was also initiated by a hedge fund.) [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/shell-ordered-by-dutch-court-to-cut-carbon-emissions-11622038961 https://www.wsj.com/articles/shell-ordered-by-dutch-court-to...
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  The thing with the Shell decision is that even if the decision stands, all Shell has to do is put their emission producing refineries into a different company, they can wash their hands off it then. CO2 emissions? We only sell petrol which we buy from this other company. Or other paperwork trickery, either way, they'll get away with things. Of course, by 2030 the market will have shifted towards electric vehicles by a lot already.
  - tda 5y ago
    The decision already applies to all of the 1100 holdings Shell has. The mother company is held responsible for all activities of the subsidiaries
  - jerven 5y ago
    Paperwork trickery will be harder, as they can't be subsidiaries. So it has to be a real sale to a real external company. This takes time and money and basically means getting out of the refinery business. This doesn't change anything for the shell rotterdam facilities as they still need to co-operate. Basically, in the worst case is just a number of months delay for all petro investments. While all the green stuff can go ahead. Already a real impact, even if it is not so big in that case as expected.
    - marcus_holmes 5y ago
      yeah they can't do the thing that the miners do and put all the pollution in a subsidiary that then goes bankrupt. Well, they can, but then all the refineries are in a bankrupt subsidiary and the objective is achieved anyway ;)
jacobmischka 5y ago
One of the top comments > Correct me if I'm wrong but the oil companies do not burn their own oil, so they are not the emitters. They sell the oil to their customers (i.e. all of us), and they (we) burn it. Why are the producers blamed for all the emissions? Because it's easy to point a finger at them? That is some galaxy brain logic, impressive.
- jurip 5y ago
  I'm happy to blame big oil for plenty of environmental crimes and PR bullshit. But I don't think the commenter is wrong here. What do you think would happen if the big oil companies decided (and let's just ignore the shareholder revolt this would cause, for the sake of argument) that they're done pumping oil, and just closed the oil fields and scrapped their tankers? Would the world just celebrate the solution to the climate crisis and happily move on, from now on using only non-fossil energy sources?
  - jacobmischka 5y ago
    I guess it's possible they meant both parties deserve some blame, you're right. When I read it initially it came off to me like the oil companies should be entirely blameless which just was hilarious to me at the time.
    - nexuist 5y ago
      I think one nuanced take on this is that oil can be burned in many different ways, some more harmful than others. For example, smoke stacks without filters are obviously more harmful than those with them. The companies that operate power plants without filters should also be blamed, not just the third parties who supply oil to them. And of course, I don't think anyone blames oil companies for supplying oil for plastic production purposes; we blame companies higher up the chain for wrapping everything in plastic. I mean, there's someone in this thread complaining that salami comes packaged in plastic, which is a totally fair complaint, and also something an oil company has absolutely no control over.
    - SyzygistSix 5y ago
paganel 5y ago
Not so sure this move to EVs is the best thing going forward, unless we really solve the power/energy distribution thing, that is. Yes, we might partially solve the power generation issue as solar cells are getting cheaper, we get better at reining in wind-power costs, maybe even getting back to nuclear etc, but imo getting that power from point A (generation site) to points B to Z (consumers) reliably and in abundance is a not-solved problem. Case in point me, as I’m writing this comment. I’ve decided to spend the middle of this week at my parents’ house in the East-European countryside doing wfh (I’ve got the vaccine and I finally feel safe about seeing them in direct contact) but I just had to turn off the light in my room just now because it was flickering. Judging by what I can read on the local FB group this is a usual thing. My parents live 30-40 km away from the country’s only nuclear plant, so while power generation is not an issue reliable power distribution is indeed a big issue. While this may be anecdotal I venture to say that this example is not singular, that is if you go outside the big populous cities (where, I agree, while still present this sort of issue is less prevalent). I’m also curious about who’s going to pay fir building that reliable power-distribution network we will need? The car companies aren’t going to do it, neither the big oil majors.
- plantain 5y ago
  You pay for it when you buy electricity (usually as a fixed component of the price per kWh). Electric cars will consume large amounts of electricity, and that will fund the upgrade of the grid proportionally. That said, if bi-directional charging becomes commonplace, the grid will probably get substantially simpler - you can burst off your car or your neighbors car in peak hours, 4-9pm.
  - paganel 5y ago
    > Electric cars will consume large amounts of electricity In the meantime poor communities who won't be able to afford EVs just yet will remain stuck on using the old and unreliable networks, hence increasing the societal and economic disparities. As things stand right now most of the poor in the US and Western Europe can still afford a car, a $1000 or 2000 euro beater but one that still works. In the future they won't probably afford SH EVs and they won't have a reliable network to charge them. Again, this sort of worldview is pretty much absent from the minds of people making this top-down decisions.
ArkanExplorer 5y ago
I wish we could just have a global carbon price instead of all these piecemeal judgements. Start it at $50/tonne, tariff anyone who doesn't apply it, and increase it until global CO2 emissions reach a target level.
- plantain 5y ago
  Most of the world has a carbon price in some form now - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tax#Implementation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tax#Implementation Given the soaring cost of carbon in the EU, I think it won't be long before the EU heavily tariff's anyone trading with it without a similar policy
  - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
    [0](Also) Most of the world maintains billions worth of oil and gas subsidies for Energy and Oil/Gas companies. These incentives effectively subsidize the operational costs of carbon emitting operations, they very directly make it cheaper to pollute. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidy
    - Leherenn 5y ago
      That doesn't seem to be most of the world according to your link, only the big energy-producing countries. There is a lack of differentiation between 0 and very low that makes is hard to be more definitive though.
    - roenxi 5y ago
      Although technically subsidies, they are typically just tax advantages. Corporate taxes in general are a bit counter-productive - taxes on energy-producing corporations apparently cross over into embarrassingly damaging to the point where most countries can't stomach it. It would be better to extend those 'subsidies' to every business rather than attempt to make energy more expensive.
  - azalemeth 5y ago
fauigerzigerk 5y ago
I wonder, is it really "crushing" them or is it saving them from themselves? It could be either. It depends on the balance between writing off old investments before their time (purely economically speaking) and avoiding new investments that would never deliver positive returns anyway as the age of fossil fuel comes to an end. In fact, this is a question that doesn't just affect the oil majors. The cost of our entire entire energy transition very much depends on timing. I think what makes this politically difficult is that these costs are directly caused by political decisions whereas the cost of global warming is less easily distingushable from a natural disaster.
- helsinkiandrew 5y ago
  Exxon spent over $35M dollars fighting the board changes - it is at least a crushing defeat for the current management/board. https://www.wsj.com/articles/exxon-vs-activists-battle-over-future-of-oil-and-gas-reaches-showdown-11621950967 https://www.wsj.com/articles/exxon-vs-activists-battle-over-...
- pydry 5y ago
  These companies will forever be a shadow of their former selves. They'll still probably be around but they'll never reinvent themselves as green mega-giants. Any more than Xerox would become the next apple or Kodak became the next Nikon. Carbon extraction is fundamentally part of their DNA. There's a struggle within these companies between those that want to keep the glory days going as long as possible and those that are trying to metaphorically steer the supertanker towards a greener future. Despite the immense amount of capital at their disposal, this struggle will ensure that it is not deployed efficiently. Realistically I think stifling these companies financially will do more for the planet than encouraging them and hoping that they will reinvent themselves. A dollar invested by a greentech company will be more effectively put to use than a dollar invested by an oil supermajor.
  - fauigerzigerk 5y ago
    >Realistically I think stifling these companies financially will do more for the planet than encouraging them and hoping that they will reinvent themselves. I don't think it matters for our planet what these companies do or whether they can reinvent themselves. The climate change problem can only be tackled from the demand side. As long as there is demand for hydrocarbons someone will meet that demand and someone will invest in new production. Not letting it happen under western brand names may soothe some people's conscience but it won't reduce carbon emissions.

46 points by chha 5y ago

Its a shame that we rely on the markets to enforce what should be enforced by the UN. Climate change is a global problem that capitalism is responsible largely for, asking capitalism to solve it is unrealistic at best.

madaxe_again 5y ago

If any of this actually sticks. I can see the judgment against shell going through appeals processes for decades, during which it’ll be business as usual. If the appeals don’t look to be going well, they’ll replace the government and the judiciary as necessary, and will try again. Chevron and Exxon, the proof will be in the pudding, but it just smells like so much greenwashing right now.

LeCow 5y ago

Lol good luck, shareholders/executives don't care because tomorrow everyone's going to use their cars, have their goods shipped by tankers and Tweet on their plastic covered phones. Everyone in society decides whether or not a business/industry succeeds or fails. Not a Twitter mob.

asdff 5y ago
You hardly have a choice to avoid the plastic crap in life. You can't even buy salami without it being packaged in plastic. No sense in putting the onus on the consumer, when it was industry looking to cut costs who set up this environment in the first place.
- wiz21c 5y ago
  Naaahhh you didn't get it. They do it because the consumer (you, me) ask for the convenience of those packages. </cynical>
  - Sabinus 5y ago
    If, say, the price of plastics rises to account for legally mandated recycling and disposal efforts, then plastic use will fall despite demand for convenience of plastic packaging.
  - Arnt 5y ago
    Close, but you confuse these emissions with those. Shell pumps oil out of the ground, refines it, transports and sells it, and that oil eventually becomes your emissions and mine. But Shell's production also causes emissions that it controls. IIRC (from very fuzzy memory), if Shell does what the court says, its production-related emissions will be <10% of what its customers emit using what Shell sells them.
  - KozmoNau7 5y ago
    They do it because convenience sells and because marketing has indoctrinated us to constantly desire Fresh! New! Pristine! Shiny! products. Using plastic is the cheapest way for them to do it, since they don't care about the externalities and don't have to pay for the long-term damage they cause. The solution is regulation. Make the manufacturers bear the costs of responsibly handling every bit of waste they produce, every bit of plastic. Make them responsible for taking back their waste, perhaps with a deposit system like on empty bottles. This will make them reduce their use of plastic packaging, in favor of better designed and actually biodegradable/reusable packaging. And follow up hard to make sure they actually meet their promises, and don't just ship it all to a third-world country, because they will do that, given the chance.
  - marcus_holmes 5y ago
    Consumers wanted CFC's in our fridges too.
yunohn 5y ago
> Not a Twitter mob. This post is a Tweet, indeed. But it discusses 3 real world, substantial changes like court rulings, board changes, and fines.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

Chevron thing was meaningless. The Shell decision is material, but subject to appeal [1]. The ExxonMobil vote is permanent and unprecedented. (It was also initiated by a hedge fund.) [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/shell-ordered-by-dutch-court-to-cut-carbon-emissions-11622038961 https://www.wsj.com/articles/shell-ordered-by-dutch-court-to...

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
The thing with the Shell decision is that even if the decision stands, all Shell has to do is put their emission producing refineries into a different company, they can wash their hands off it then. CO2 emissions? We only sell petrol which we buy from this other company. Or other paperwork trickery, either way, they'll get away with things. Of course, by 2030 the market will have shifted towards electric vehicles by a lot already.
- tda 5y ago
  The decision already applies to all of the 1100 holdings Shell has. The mother company is held responsible for all activities of the subsidiaries
- jerven 5y ago
  Paperwork trickery will be harder, as they can't be subsidiaries. So it has to be a real sale to a real external company. This takes time and money and basically means getting out of the refinery business. This doesn't change anything for the shell rotterdam facilities as they still need to co-operate. Basically, in the worst case is just a number of months delay for all petro investments. While all the green stuff can go ahead. Already a real impact, even if it is not so big in that case as expected.
  - marcus_holmes 5y ago
    yeah they can't do the thing that the miners do and put all the pollution in a subsidiary that then goes bankrupt. Well, they can, but then all the refineries are in a bankrupt subsidiary and the objective is achieved anyway ;)

jacobmischka 5y ago

One of the top comments > Correct me if I'm wrong but the oil companies do not burn their own oil, so they are not the emitters. They sell the oil to their customers (i.e. all of us), and they (we) burn it. Why are the producers blamed for all the emissions? Because it's easy to point a finger at them? That is some galaxy brain logic, impressive.

jurip 5y ago
I'm happy to blame big oil for plenty of environmental crimes and PR bullshit. But I don't think the commenter is wrong here. What do you think would happen if the big oil companies decided (and let's just ignore the shareholder revolt this would cause, for the sake of argument) that they're done pumping oil, and just closed the oil fields and scrapped their tankers? Would the world just celebrate the solution to the climate crisis and happily move on, from now on using only non-fossil energy sources?
- jacobmischka 5y ago
  I guess it's possible they meant both parties deserve some blame, you're right. When I read it initially it came off to me like the oil companies should be entirely blameless which just was hilarious to me at the time.
  - nexuist 5y ago
    I think one nuanced take on this is that oil can be burned in many different ways, some more harmful than others. For example, smoke stacks without filters are obviously more harmful than those with them. The companies that operate power plants without filters should also be blamed, not just the third parties who supply oil to them. And of course, I don't think anyone blames oil companies for supplying oil for plastic production purposes; we blame companies higher up the chain for wrapping everything in plastic. I mean, there's someone in this thread complaining that salami comes packaged in plastic, which is a totally fair complaint, and also something an oil company has absolutely no control over.
  - SyzygistSix 5y ago

paganel 5y ago

Not so sure this move to EVs is the best thing going forward, unless we really solve the power/energy distribution thing, that is. Yes, we might partially solve the power generation issue as solar cells are getting cheaper, we get better at reining in wind-power costs, maybe even getting back to nuclear etc, but imo getting that power from point A (generation site) to points B to Z (consumers) reliably and in abundance is a not-solved problem. Case in point me, as I’m writing this comment. I’ve decided to spend the middle of this week at my parents’ house in the East-European countryside doing wfh (I’ve got the vaccine and I finally feel safe about seeing them in direct contact) but I just had to turn off the light in my room just now because it was flickering. Judging by what I can read on the local FB group this is a usual thing. My parents live 30-40 km away from the country’s only nuclear plant, so while power generation is not an issue reliable power distribution is indeed a big issue. While this may be anecdotal I venture to say that this example is not singular, that is if you go outside the big populous cities (where, I agree, while still present this sort of issue is less prevalent). I’m also curious about who’s going to pay fir building that reliable power-distribution network we will need? The car companies aren’t going to do it, neither the big oil majors.

plantain 5y ago
You pay for it when you buy electricity (usually as a fixed component of the price per kWh). Electric cars will consume large amounts of electricity, and that will fund the upgrade of the grid proportionally. That said, if bi-directional charging becomes commonplace, the grid will probably get substantially simpler - you can burst off your car or your neighbors car in peak hours, 4-9pm.
- paganel 5y ago
  > Electric cars will consume large amounts of electricity In the meantime poor communities who won't be able to afford EVs just yet will remain stuck on using the old and unreliable networks, hence increasing the societal and economic disparities. As things stand right now most of the poor in the US and Western Europe can still afford a car, a $1000 or 2000 euro beater but one that still works. In the future they won't probably afford SH EVs and they won't have a reliable network to charge them. Again, this sort of worldview is pretty much absent from the minds of people making this top-down decisions.

ArkanExplorer 5y ago

I wish we could just have a global carbon price instead of all these piecemeal judgements. Start it at $50/tonne, tariff anyone who doesn't apply it, and increase it until global CO2 emissions reach a target level.

plantain 5y ago
Most of the world has a carbon price in some form now - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tax#Implementation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tax#Implementation Given the soaring cost of carbon in the EU, I think it won't be long before the EU heavily tariff's anyone trading with it without a similar policy
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  [0](Also) Most of the world maintains billions worth of oil and gas subsidies for Energy and Oil/Gas companies. These incentives effectively subsidize the operational costs of carbon emitting operations, they very directly make it cheaper to pollute. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidy
  - Leherenn 5y ago
    That doesn't seem to be most of the world according to your link, only the big energy-producing countries. There is a lack of differentiation between 0 and very low that makes is hard to be more definitive though.
  - roenxi 5y ago
    Although technically subsidies, they are typically just tax advantages. Corporate taxes in general are a bit counter-productive - taxes on energy-producing corporations apparently cross over into embarrassingly damaging to the point where most countries can't stomach it. It would be better to extend those 'subsidies' to every business rather than attempt to make energy more expensive.
- azalemeth 5y ago

fauigerzigerk 5y ago

I wonder, is it really "crushing" them or is it saving them from themselves? It could be either. It depends on the balance between writing off old investments before their time (purely economically speaking) and avoiding new investments that would never deliver positive returns anyway as the age of fossil fuel comes to an end. In fact, this is a question that doesn't just affect the oil majors. The cost of our entire entire energy transition very much depends on timing. I think what makes this politically difficult is that these costs are directly caused by political decisions whereas the cost of global warming is less easily distingushable from a natural disaster.

helsinkiandrew 5y ago
Exxon spent over $35M dollars fighting the board changes - it is at least a crushing defeat for the current management/board. https://www.wsj.com/articles/exxon-vs-activists-battle-over-future-of-oil-and-gas-reaches-showdown-11621950967 https://www.wsj.com/articles/exxon-vs-activists-battle-over-...
pydry 5y ago
These companies will forever be a shadow of their former selves. They'll still probably be around but they'll never reinvent themselves as green mega-giants. Any more than Xerox would become the next apple or Kodak became the next Nikon. Carbon extraction is fundamentally part of their DNA. There's a struggle within these companies between those that want to keep the glory days going as long as possible and those that are trying to metaphorically steer the supertanker towards a greener future. Despite the immense amount of capital at their disposal, this struggle will ensure that it is not deployed efficiently. Realistically I think stifling these companies financially will do more for the planet than encouraging them and hoping that they will reinvent themselves. A dollar invested by a greentech company will be more effectively put to use than a dollar invested by an oil supermajor.
- fauigerzigerk 5y ago
  >Realistically I think stifling these companies financially will do more for the planet than encouraging them and hoping that they will reinvent themselves. I don't think it matters for our planet what these companies do or whether they can reinvent themselves. The climate change problem can only be tackled from the demand side. As long as there is demand for hydrocarbons someone will meet that demand and someone will invest in new production. Not letting it happen under western brand names may soothe some people's conscience but it won't reduce carbon emissions.