04-02-09 by dugan Oil, being a commodity that people buy and consume, ought to be priced according to supply and demand. Of course, we know that’s not true. But it’s still a little surprising to…
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Archive | Tag: instability
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Chevron’s torture(d) lawyer
03-31-09 by dugan Corporate arrogance leads to corporate blindness: AIG execs who packaged impossible risk into AAA securities, bankers who lent trillions on a bet that the real estate bubble would never pop. In Chevron’s…
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Chevron slides, for now
12-2-08 by dugan It’s no surprise that a federal jury in San Francisco acquitted Chevron in the shooting of Nigerian protestors aboard a Chevron rig a decade ago. As I noted earlier, conditions 10 years…
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Chevron’s moral liabilities
11-26-08 by dugan A jury in San Francisco is deliberating whether Chevron is liable for a shooting spree by Chevron-paid Nigerian troops against protesters aboard an oil platform a decade ago. No matter what the…
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Stevens, the biggest fish
10-27-08 by dugan Alaska’s big oil producers should be quivering a little after Sen. Ted Stevens’ conviction for lying about big gifts from an oilfield company. Here’s the connection: Bill Allen, the oilfield company executive…
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Panic in the oil business
10-16-08 by dugan As the price of oil dropped today to less than $70 a barrel (that would be $1.67 a barrel), the industry was in a panic. OPEC, the Prmarily Middle Eastern oil…
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Who’ll protect Iraqi oil?
10-14-08 by dugan How far on the hook will the American military be for the the protection of U.S. oil companies and shipping lanes? That’s a live question again, as companies including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell…
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Pump prices oughta be lower
10-9-08 by dugan When oil prices dropped to under $78 a barrel today, I asked our friend Insider to take a look at why gasoline prices are going down so much more slowly than the…
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Sliver of silver lining
9-29-08 by dugan The price of oil fell today by a slightly higher percentage than the Dow’s 7%, dropping $10 a barrel to $96. Of course, there’s another way to look at it–if that pattern…
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Las Vegas, clean-style
8-19-08 by dugan Here in Vegas, the temperature outside is low 100s, but I can crank the hotel room down to 60 degrees–true energy-sucking extravagance. But the cabbies and doormen, when I ask how to…
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Gold medal in greenwash
8-17-08 by dugan Watching ExxonMobil’s ad blitz on NBC during the Olympics, you’d think it was a company dedicated to teaching science, mentoring young engineers and eradicating malaria in the Third World. At an estimated…
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OMG! Joel Stein is right?
I can’t believe I want to quote semisatirical LA Times columnist Joel Stein–just ask my friends and former colleagues. But his "What’s so Bad About Foreign Oil" column today is about 70% right, Especially these…
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Corn, memory, energy policy
8-8-08 by dugan So what’s the price of corn these days? A little above $5.00 a bushel. It’s down about 28%, even more than the 21% drop in the price of crude oil (from over…