10-05-07 by dugan
Almost every day I see a new story about foreign governments demanding higher royalties, bigger shares of ownership and multi-billion-dollar damage payments from major oil companies operating in their territory.
Ultimately, all consumers will pay the price for these demands–at the gas pump, in their heating oil tanks, their electric bills and airline ticket prices.
Beyond the politics, the petroleum that Chevron, Exxon, Shell, BP, Conoco and friends see as their future is heavy oil, (as in Kazhakhstan and South America) tar sands (for now, mainly Canada) Both are polluting and destructive to extract. They waste large amounts of groundwater for both extraction and transport. Even refining them is more polluting.
Chevron and others are also still chasing the most environmentally destructive oil of all, Rocky Mountain shale.
In a Nov. 2005 appearance before Congress, Chevron CEO David O’Reilly said: "First, impediments to access for exploration should be removed. This would include ANWR, areas in the Rocky Mountain region, and Continental shelves."
The costs of heavy oil extraction will also steadily and permanently raise the price of oil.
Biofuels and other renewable energy sources are far cheaper in the long run than these environmentally destructive thick oils. Yet the oil business, despite its lip service to the environment, stays nearly 100% in the oil business.
This is what makes Chevron’s cheery "just folks around the world" new ad campaign so galling. Big Oil’s future isn’t in Kazhakhstan or Myanmar. And most of us would rather not ruin groundwater, line the pockets of proto-Stalinist regimes and support their repression of human rights when we heat our homes or fill our tanks.