Exxon Must Be A Bakery 'Cause It's Making Lots of Dough!

It's thrilling to watch an athlete beat his or her personal best---not so exciting to watch Exxon beat its previous quarterly earnings by earning $11.68 billion, up from $11.66 billion at the end of 2007.  Yippee.  Despite these staggering figures, investors were "disappointed".   How can one be disappointed with record figures such as this?  Well, it turns out that there was a "10 percent drop in oil production and a 3 percent decline in natural gas production from the second quarter of 2007."  You see, when oil was only $20 a barrel, oil producing countries such as Russia, Venezuela, Iran and Nigeria signed agreements to let oil companies come in and work their oil fields, but now that the price of oil has skyrocketed, these same countries are in the position to demand more of the profits.  Heck, some countries are telling American and British oil companies to get out!  This, in addition to the rising cost of simply doing business---especially with demands on the marketplace from countries like China and India----makes the future for oil companies look much bleaker than the present picture.

In response to the inevitability of the oil industry's fall from grace, many oil companies are allocating large portions of their profits towards renewable and alternative energy sources.  BP, for instance, is making a big push into solar and wind power to help offset the difficulties of being a mega-oil corporation.  Exxon, however, has expressed little to no interest in going down the green brick road.  As revealed in Sierra Club's Exxpose Exxon campaign: "Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson dismisses renewable energy as 'uneconomic.' In a 2006 speech on Capitol Hill, Mr. Tillerson argued that developers of energy alternatives should be left alone to compete with the oil and gas industry. Without reference to the billions of dollars handed out to the oil and gas industry, he deplored renewable energy incentive programs. 'Interventions only distort the market,' he said." 

If the executives at Exxon don't change their tunes in the near future, they'll find themselves in a very dark oily pit of their own making. For my part, I'm going to do what I can to avoid Exxon Mobil from now on.  Let's see how much of a dent I can put in that $11+ billion figure...not much, eh?  Join me then, and bring your friends.