Tuesday, March 09, 2004
Shell game
Royal Dutch/Shell Group came up with an "external story line" (that is, a lie) to conceal a "huge shortfall" of proven oil and gas reserves. Now the truth comes out!
All this is, of course, predictable. Since our ability to extract oil is peaking (see the Hubbert curve), it was inevitable that (a) there would be a mismatch between the reserves the oil companies claimed, and those that they had, and (b) that they would try to conceal this as long as possible. With Shell, the truth has come out.
Is anyone other than me wondering if the reason Cheney is trying to prevent the American people from reading the deliberations of his Energy Task Force is that they would show what is true for Shell is true for all the oil companies?
Now, I suppose it's forgivable, or at least understandable, for a great power to go to war to protect a natural resource it's people depend on, and which has become scarcer than we thought. History has tended to work that way, after all.
What would not be forgivable is (a) Bush lying about our true situation (not the war, we know about those lies; our energy situation), and (b) not even attempting to do anything to fix our dependence on the oil—vague, pie-in-the sky schemes about hydrogen cars just don't cut it, and Bush never puts any political capital into.
The new head of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group and its current chief financial officer, as well as the chairman ousted last week, were advised of huge shortfalls in proven oil and natural gas reserves in 2002, two years before they were publicly disclosed, according to company memorandums and notes of executive discussions.
But rather than disclose the problems to investors, senior executives in a July 2002 memorandum came up with — and later carried out — what the memorandum described as an "external storyline" and "investor relations script" that tried to "highlight major projects fueling growth," "stress the strength" of existing resources, and minimize the significance of reserves as a measure of growth.
(via The Times)
All this is, of course, predictable. Since our ability to extract oil is peaking (see the Hubbert curve), it was inevitable that (a) there would be a mismatch between the reserves the oil companies claimed, and those that they had, and (b) that they would try to conceal this as long as possible. With Shell, the truth has come out.
Is anyone other than me wondering if the reason Cheney is trying to prevent the American people from reading the deliberations of his Energy Task Force is that they would show what is true for Shell is true for all the oil companies?
Now, I suppose it's forgivable, or at least understandable, for a great power to go to war to protect a natural resource it's people depend on, and which has become scarcer than we thought. History has tended to work that way, after all.
What would not be forgivable is (a) Bush lying about our true situation (not the war, we know about those lies; our energy situation), and (b) not even attempting to do anything to fix our dependence on the oil—vague, pie-in-the sky schemes about hydrogen cars just don't cut it, and Bush never puts any political capital into.
