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Big Oil Slashing Spending Amid Low Prices
Big Oil Slashing Spending Amid Low Prices.
Oil prices continue to slide in mid-December, slumping towards another key threshold of $60 per barrel.
Oil prices hit a five-year low on December 10. While many major oil players have gone to lengths to assure markets that they can weather the price downturn – and indeed it is far from clear how long the current price collapse will last – low prices are clearly starting to have an impact on major investment decisions. Drilling permits dropped by 36 percent between October and November, and the number of rigs in operation continues to fall.
Many oil companies are beginning to pare back capital expenditures, reconsidering pouring billions of dollars into expensive projects that may or may not be profitable in the current environment.
ConocoPhillips announced on December 8 that it would slash capital expenditures in 2015 by 20 percent, dropping its spending budget to $13.5 billion. And in a sign that the oil price slump is starting to take a major toll on future investments, ConocoPhillips said that it would “defer significant investment” on its projects that are in their earlier stages, such as its fields in the Montney and Duvernay in Canada, along with its holdings in the Permian basin and the Niobrara.
Related: Who Comes Out On Top After Oil Pandemonium?
BP is also hoping to cut costs. It expects to lay off workers and trim spending, perhaps by as much as $2 billion. It is unclear how much spending the oil major already had planned to cut, as it continues to downsize after steep losses stemming from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, but a company spokesman said the drop in oil prices “has increased our focus on these activities.” In an investor presentation, BP said that it usually approves new projects when oil prices are at $80 or higher.
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Blundell: The Missing Link Between Oil Baron Charles Koch and British Climate Denial | DeSmog UK
Blundell: The Missing Link Between Oil Baron Charles Koch and British Climate Denial | DeSmog UK.
John Blundell is welcomed into the inner circle of the Koch elite at at time of inner-family squabbling and political scandal. He soon gains insight into an empire run by obsession and apparent deception. This is part two of DeSmog UK’s history of Blundell and Charles Koch.
Blundell was offered a well paid job at the Institute of Humane Studies (IHS) in April 1982 – a hardline neoliberal think tank funded by the oil billionare Charles Koch.
He resigned as spokesman for the Federation of Small Businesses and as a councillor at a London borough and moved to California in the United States with his wife Christine and their three-month-old baby boy, Miles.
He was still working at the IHS when it moved to George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, one of the many front groups and free market think tanks to benefit from Koch funding.
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Vivian Krause and Richard Berman’s Oil Industry Playbook | DeSmogBlog
Vivian Krause and Richard Berman’s Oil Industry Playbook | DeSmogBlog.
He had no idea he was being taped.
So when influential Washington, DC,political consultant Richard Berman talked about strategy and tactics to the oil and gas industry’s Western Energy Alliance in Colorado Springs this past June, he didn’t mince words.
“This is an endless war,” Berman said.
The secret tape was published in the New York Times a few weeks ago, released by a displeased oil industry executive, on condition of anonymity.
As he urged industry reps to employ tactics like digging up embarrassing tidbits about environmentalists and liberal celebrities, Berman also made one emphatic point:
“People always ask me one question all the time, ‘How do I know that I won’t be found out as a supporter of what you’re doing?’ We run all of this stuff through non-profit organizations that are insulated from having to disclose donors. There is total anonymity. People don’t know who supports us. We’ve been doing this for 20-something years in this regard.”
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Edelman’s TransCanada Astroturf Documents Expose Oil Industry’s Broad Attack on Public Interest | DeSmogBlog
Documents obtained by Greenpeace detail a desperate astroturf PR strategydesigned by Edelman for TransCanada to win public support for its Energy East tar sands export pipeline. TransCanada has failed for years to win approval of the controversial border-crossing Keystone XLpipeline, so apparently the company has decided to “win ugly or lose pretty” with an aggressive public relations attack on its opponents.
The Edelman strategy documents and work proposals outline a “grassroots advocacy” campaign plan to build support for TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline as well as to undermine public opposition to oil and pipelines generally.
The documents should cause well-deserved embarrassment for Edelman, the largest PR company in the world, as well as TransCanada.
But this is not just a temporary black eye for a PR firm and its corporate client. The Edelman documents reveal a broader industry campaign to undermine the public interest and attack the oil industry’s critics across the board.
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Industry-Funded Vivian Krause Uses Classic Dirty PR Tactics to Distract from Canada’s Real Energy Debate | DeSmog Canada
Vivian Krause has spent years scrutinizing how Canadian environmental groups are funded, claiming she’s just asking “fair questions.”
But as the blogger-turned-newspaper-columnist has run rampant with her conspiracy theory that American charitable foundations’ support of Canadian environmental groups is nefarious, she has continually avoided seeking a fair answer.
If Krause were seeking a fair answer, she’d quickly learn that both investment dollars and philanthropic dollars cross borders all the time. There isn’t anything special or surprising about environmental groups receiving funding from U.S. foundations that share their goals — especially when the increasingly global nature of environmental challenges, particularly climate change, is taken into consideration.
Despite this common-sense answer, Krause’s strategy has effectively diverted attention away from genuine debate of environmental issues, while simultaneously undermining the important role environmental groups play in Canadian society.
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