The truth about Gas and oil

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These are halcyon, once-in-a-generation days for oil producers--and the sustained rise in energy prices is just extra octane in the tank. Once reviled as polluters and price gougers, oil executives now seem like good guys, particularly compared, say, with the misguided regulators who caused all those California blackouts. In Africa, South America, the former Soviet Union, and even the Middle East, areas rich in oil and gas are becoming available for exploration and development. Better technology has enabled companies to recover more oil from existing deposits and greatly improved the odds of finding new deposits. With three former oilmen at the top of the Bush Administration--the President, the Vice President, and Secretary of Commerce Don Evans--the industry talks hopefully of reducing taxes on producers, opening more U.S. land for drilling, and developing a long-delayed national energy policy.

No company is benefiting more from this gusher of good news than Exxon Mobil. In 2000 it returned to the top of the Fortune 500 for the first time since Exxon basked there alone in 1984. With adjusted revenues of $210 billion--$17 billion more than No. 2 Wal-Mart--it blew past the competition the way Tiger Woods does on a golf course. Between 1999 and 2000 it grew by nearly $47 billion (more than the size of No. 22, American International Group).

Nor does Exxon Mobil scrape by on the tissue-thin margins of a retailer. Last year it made $17.7 billion, nearly three times as much as Wal-Mart, and more money than any company ever. Best of all, it has paid off for shareholders. Over three decades, the average annual return for Exxon Mobil and its predecessor, Exxon, has exceeded the return of the S&P 500.

For sure, higher oil prices have pumped up both revenues and profits. The average price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude climbed to $30.31 last year, vs. $19.25 in 1999 (when Exxon Mobil's profits were less than half as large). But there is more to this success story than OPEC's squeeze. So far, Exxon Mobil looks like a merger made in heaven. The companies that combined at the end of 1999 have become a highly focused, smooth-running machine remarkably efficient at discovering, refining, and marketing oil and gas.

One number makes the point. Although people have been extracting oil from the earth since 1859, Exxon Mobil spent less per barrel to find it last year than at almost any time in history: 65 cents. That's about half as much as the 1999 cost of $1.20 a barrel, and well below the $4 per barrel the company spent in the 1980s. In other words, it has almost never been cheaper for Exxon Mobil to find a resource that has for a century become increasingly scarce--and one that some alarmists say is in danger of total depletion.

Exxon Mobil is a world apart from the rest of the oil business, figuratively and literally. Local taxi drivers have a hard time finding its headquarters, on a secluded, guarded site in the Dallas suburb of Irving; nearby Cowboys Stadium is a much more popular destination. The headquarters building, an overscaled three-story structure with several tiers of peaked gray-green roofs, looks considerably more Asian than Texan. Inside, a vast space decorated with flowers and fine art seems to swallow up the 400 employees who work there. The overall impression is of a well-endowed museum with very few visitors.

Scattered throughout the building are representations of the Exxon tiger, most dramatically in a large painting hanging behind the desk of Lee R. Raymond, Exxon Mobil's chairman and CEO since 1993. Raymond, 62, has come to personify the company he runs: proud, independent, demanding, blunt. A South Dakota native who has spent his entire working life at the company, Raymond says he could care less that Exxon Mobil is the largest corporation in America. "We don't get too excited about revenues around here," he told Fortune. "We look at this company on a 20-year basis."

What Raymond does care about is where in the world Exxon Mobil can profitably invest its capital to find oil. "We have opportunities the magnitude of which we haven't seen since the 1970s, and we have the technology to take advantage of them," he says. "It's a pretty exciting time." Exxon Mobil is preparing to spend $45 billion over the next decade to increase its energy production by three million barrels a day. "The opportunity to go places is greater than it's ever been," says Ron Gold, vice president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation in New York.

Every day Exxon Mobil pumps 4.3 million barrels from nearly 27,000 wells. Last year it replaced 112% of its production, the seventh year in a row that it added more energy than it produced. With 21.5 billion barrels of proven reserves, the company could, in theory, pump oil and gas at current rates for 13 years without locating another drop. But, of course, it will locate plenty, with a lot less drama than in the days--not so long ago--when wildcat wells were successful just 10% of the time. Exxon Mobil can now strike oil with about 50% of its wildcat wells, even though the oil is much harder to find; if the company is drilling where it has operated before, the finding rate goes to 60%. At the Hoover and Diana fields, 160 miles from land in the Gulf of Mexico, Exxon Mobil located 400 million barrels under one mile of water and more than a mile underground.

You say that you want to find a way to reduce the gas prices in America? Well then, quit paying what their asking! If we as Americans, free to choose, would boycot the top three oil producers in this country, them being in rank by Fortune 500, 1. Exxon/Mobil, 16. Texaco, and 20. Chevron, then they would have no choice but to lower their prices! But we as Americans are too stupid to realize this. We just go to what ever gas station is closest, cause going one more mile to save 3 cents is not worth it. Well tell that to the CEO of Exxon who made more profits last year alone that Walmart has ever made!!! Did you know that Exxon had enough financial ground to aquire Mobile, but they still to this day do not have the finances to pay for the clean up of their oil spill (the Exxon Valdez, for those of us who are mentally challenged) which has cost us (the stupid people of America) billions of dollars to clean up not to mention the probably permantant and ir-reversible damage on wildlife and business. Some 35,000 commercial fishermen, Alaska natives and property owners hurt by the spill still wait for Exxon to pay up on a $5 billion jury verdict handed down five years ago. They blame the oil giant for disrupting the salmon and herring fisheries. Exxon insists it has paid enough and vows to fight the damage award all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Of the 23 species of birds, fish and marine mammals hurt by the spill, the trustees have declared only two — the bald eagle and the river otter — fully recovered. Despite the spill, Exxon has prospered and could soon become the world’s largest oil company with its proposed $73 billion acquisition of Mobil Corp. And it has done just that. Can't afford to clean up your own damn mess but can afford to buy another company! Every penny we put forth to this and other oil giants like it, through the purchase of their gas, is telling them it is ok to continue practices like the ones in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Here is one last sickening thought on the matter of the Valdez Spill, Beneath the rocks of the Prince William Sound Waters, the sand is covered with weathered oil, hardened into asphalt. Pry that away and you find oil that’s seeped into the sand, 10 inches deep in some spots. When the weather turns warm, you can smell the oil. The Exxon Valdez ran aground 50 miles east of Prince William Sound, Alaska on March 24, 1989, and let loose with 11 million gallons of Alaska North Slope crude oil — enough to cover a football field with 30½ feet of oil.


	The Truth Commission \| home The truth about the Government \| The truth about Healthcare \| The truth about Parenting \| The truth about Gas and oil \| The truth aboutDrugs \| The truth about War \| The truth about Religion \| Contact Me \| Miscellaneous \| The truth about Media \| The truth about Death \| The truth about Love \| The truth about Neighbors \| The truth about Racism \| Fiendish Linx The truth about Gas and oil These are halcyon, once-in-a-generation days for oil producers--and the sustained rise in energy prices is just extra octane in the tank. Once reviled as polluters and price gougers, oil executives now seem like good guys, particularly compared, say, with the misguided regulators who caused all those California blackouts. In Africa, South America, the former Soviet Union, and even the Middle East, areas rich in oil and gas are becoming available for exploration and development. Better technology has enabled companies to recover more oil from existing deposits and greatly improved the odds of finding new deposits. With three former oilmen at the top of the Bush Administration--the President, the Vice President, and Secretary of Commerce Don Evans--the industry talks hopefully of reducing taxes on producers, opening more U.S. land for drilling, and developing a long-delayed national energy policy. No company is benefiting more from this gusher of good news than Exxon Mobil. In 2000 it returned to the top of the Fortune 500 for the first time since Exxon basked there alone in 1984. With adjusted revenues of $210 billion--$17 billion more than No. 2 Wal-Mart--it blew past the competition the way Tiger Woods does on a golf course. Between 1999 and 2000 it grew by nearly $47 billion (more than the size of No. 22, American International Group). Nor does Exxon Mobil scrape by on the tissue-thin margins of a retailer. Last year it made $17.7 billion, nearly three times as much as Wal-Mart, and more money than any company ever. Best of all, it has paid off for shareholders. Over three decades, the average annual return for Exxon Mobil and its predecessor, Exxon, has exceeded the return of the S&P 500. For sure, higher oil prices have pumped up both revenues and profits. The average price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude climbed to $30.31 last year, vs. $19.25 in 1999 (when Exxon Mobil's profits were less than half as large). But there is more to this success story than OPEC's squeeze. So far, Exxon Mobil looks like a merger made in heaven. The companies that combined at the end of 1999 have become a highly focused, smooth-running machine remarkably efficient at discovering, refining, and marketing oil and gas. One number makes the point. Although people have been extracting oil from the earth since 1859, Exxon Mobil spent less per barrel to find it last year than at almost any time in history: 65 cents. That's about half as much as the 1999 cost of $1.20 a barrel, and well below the $4 per barrel the company spent in the 1980s. In other words, it has almost never been cheaper for Exxon Mobil to find a resource that has for a century become increasingly scarce--and one that some alarmists say is in danger of total depletion. Exxon Mobil is a world apart from the rest of the oil business, figuratively and literally. Local taxi drivers have a hard time finding its headquarters, on a secluded, guarded site in the Dallas suburb of Irving; nearby Cowboys Stadium is a much more popular destination. The headquarters building, an overscaled three-story structure with several tiers of peaked gray-green roofs, looks considerably more Asian than Texan. Inside, a vast space decorated with flowers and fine art seems to swallow up the 400 employees who work there. The overall impression is of a well-endowed museum with very few visitors. Scattered throughout the building are representations of the Exxon tiger, most dramatically in a large painting hanging behind the desk of Lee R. Raymond, Exxon Mobil's chairman and CEO since 1993. Raymond, 62, has come to personify the company he runs: proud, independent, demanding, blunt. A South Dakota native who has spent his entire working life at the company, Raymond says he could care less that Exxon Mobil is the largest corporation in America. "We don't get too excited about revenues around here," he told Fortune. "We look at this company on a 20-year basis." What Raymond does care about is where in the world Exxon Mobil can profitably invest its capital to find oil. "We have opportunities the magnitude of which we haven't seen since the 1970s, and we have the technology to take advantage of them," he says. "It's a pretty exciting time." Exxon Mobil is preparing to spend $45 billion over the next decade to increase its energy production by three million barrels a day. "The opportunity to go places is greater than it's ever been," says Ron Gold, vice president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation in New York. Every day Exxon Mobil pumps 4.3 million barrels from nearly 27,000 wells. Last year it replaced 112% of its production, the seventh year in a row that it added more energy than it produced. With 21.5 billion barrels of proven reserves, the company could, in theory, pump oil and gas at current rates for 13 years without locating another drop. But, of course, it will locate plenty, with a lot less drama than in the days--not so long ago--when wildcat wells were successful just 10% of the time. Exxon Mobil can now strike oil with about 50% of its wildcat wells, even though the oil is much harder to find; if the company is drilling where it has operated before, the finding rate goes to 60%. At the Hoover and Diana fields, 160 miles from land in the Gulf of Mexico, Exxon Mobil located 400 million barrels under one mile of water and more than a mile underground. You say that you want to find a way to reduce the gas prices in America? Well then, quit paying what their asking! If we as Americans, free to choose, would boycot the top three oil producers in this country, them being in rank by Fortune 500, 1. Exxon/Mobil, 16. Texaco, and 20. Chevron, then they would have no choice but to lower their prices! But we as Americans are too stupid to realize this. We just go to what ever gas station is closest, cause going one more mile to save 3 cents is not worth it. Well tell that to the CEO of Exxon who made more profits last year alone that Walmart has ever made!!! Did you know that Exxon had enough financial ground to aquire Mobile, but they still to this day do not have the finances to pay for the clean up of their oil spill (the Exxon Valdez, for those of us who are mentally challenged) which has cost us (the stupid people of America) billions of dollars to clean up not to mention the probably permantant and ir-reversible damage on wildlife and business. Some 35,000 commercial fishermen, Alaska natives and property owners hurt by the spill still wait for Exxon to pay up on a $5 billion jury verdict handed down five years ago. They blame the oil giant for disrupting the salmon and herring fisheries. Exxon insists it has paid enough and vows to fight the damage award all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Of the 23 species of birds, fish and marine mammals hurt by the spill, the trustees have declared only two — the bald eagle and the river otter — fully recovered. Despite the spill, Exxon has prospered and could soon become the world’s largest oil company with its proposed $73 billion acquisition of Mobil Corp. And it has done just that. Can't afford to clean up your own damn mess but can afford to buy another company! Every penny we put forth to this and other oil giants like it, through the purchase of their gas, is telling them it is ok to continue practices like the ones in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Here is one last sickening thought on the matter of the Valdez Spill, Beneath the rocks of the Prince William Sound Waters, the sand is covered with weathered oil, hardened into asphalt. Pry that away and you find oil that’s seeped into the sand, 10 inches deep in some spots. When the weather turns warm, you can smell the oil. The Exxon Valdez ran aground 50 miles east of Prince William Sound, Alaska on March 24, 1989, and let loose with 11 million gallons of Alaska North Slope crude oil — enough to cover a football field with 30½ feet of oil.