Showing posts with label oil companies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oil companies. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Friday, June 14, 2013
Monday, January 7, 2013
Friday, June 10, 2011
Khosla chides Big Oil for lack of biofuels appetite
Reuters
By Reese Ewing
SAO PAULO Mon Jun 6, 2011 5:52pm EDT
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Billionaire Vinod Khosla took Big Oil to task on Monday for taking more risk on a long-odds deepwater oil well than on the future of biomass energy that he says will change the world within decades.
Speaking the 2011 Brazilian Ethanol Summit in Sao Paulo, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems said that the world is on the verge of a technological breakthrough in cost-effectively converting crops like sugarcane into most of the fuels and consumer products that petroleum now provides.
He bluntly chastised executives from energy companies such as Royal-Dutch Shell and Britain's BP, who were sitting on stage with him before a crowd of 2,000 people, for what he said was a failure to sufficiently embrace biofuels.
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Friday, November 5, 2010
Oil majors invest in ethanol, expect 2011 recovery
Reuters
By Laura MacInnis
GENEVA Wed Nov 3, 2010 12:38pm EDT
GENEVA (Reuters) - Major oil companies, anticipating a rebound in ethanol prices next year, are eager to stake claims in biofuels markets and benefit from new U.S. fuel blending allowances and other incentives, senior executives said.
Brazilian drought and high soft commodities prices have increased the cost and hurt demand for ethanol as an alternative fuel over the past year, raising questions about the viability of small-scale biofuels ventures.
But the big players see big opportunity in new government targets for renewable energy investments, including a higher allowable proportion of ethanol mixed with U.S. gasoline.
Luis Scoffone, vice president of Shell Alternative Energies, which this year formed a $12 billion joint venture with Brazil's Cosan, said on Wednesday his company would this year exceed the 9 billion litres of ethanol it distributed in 2009.
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Monday, June 21, 2010
BP disaster reverberates among ethanol supporters
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
By Jeffrey Tomich
06/16/2010
The ethanol industry has for years draped itself with the American flag, positioning itself as a cleaner, homegrown alternative to oil. Never has that been more true than today.
With regulators and legislators poised to decide issues that will shape ethanol's future for years to come, the ethanol lobby is increasingly making the scene unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico — with tens of thousands of barrels of crude still flowing daily from BP's deepwater well — a backdrop for the nation's energy debate.
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Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Why Obama's Energy Plan Will Push Oil Prices Much Higher
q1Publishing.com
Apr 03, 2010
By Andrew Mickey, Q1 Publishing
It has been described as a “stunning” reversal.
In reality though, the “reversal” is actually cementing one of the greatest investment opportunities of the next decade.
Last Wednesday the government announced it was opening up offshore waters to oil drilling and exploration.
It was hailed as great news by most of the media. The move to open new areas to oil exploration when oil’s at $80 a barrel appeared to be a great economic move and a greater political move.
But not all is what it seems. And a great investment opportunity was just turned into a greater one.
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Monday, January 4, 2010
Chilly Climate for Oil Refiners
The New York Times Energy & Environment
By JAD MOUAWAD
Published: December 23, 2009
Only a few years ago, a cry went up that the United States needed more oil refineries. The perceived shortage was so acute that George W. Bush, president at the time, even offered disused military bases as sites for building them.
Not only did that never come to pass, but the reverse is now happening. The business of oil refining is mired in a deep crisis, with five refineries having shut down this year, including plants in Delaware, New Jersey, California and New Mexico.
Read the full story
Monday, November 9, 2009
Big Oil has good chance at making ethanol profitable - analyst
ICIS.com
05 November 2009 16:41 [Source: ICIS news]
PARIS (ICIS news)--Oil companies could have an easier time turning a profit in biofuels by acquiring failed ethanol plants and running the operations at significantly lower costs, an analyst said on Thursday.
Oil companies can succeed where others failed because they can get the plants at a much lower cost, said Standard & Poor's associate Mark Habib during a presentation at the World Ethanol 2009 conference in Paris, France.
Big Oil interest in biofuels made headlines earlier this year after Sunoco and Valero snapped up ethanol plants that had gone bankrupt.
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Thursday, October 22, 2009
Big Oil Looks to Biofuels
The Wall Street Journal
OCTOBER 19, 2009
By GUY CHAZAN
As low-carbon fuels get pushed, BP, Shell and others invest in alternatives
The biofuels industry, hit hard by the global credit crunch, is getting a shot in the arm from a new source–the oil majors.
Among the oil companies, BP PLC and Royal Dutch Shell PLC have been the most active investors in the sector. But it's even beginning to attract more-conservative companies like Exxon Mobil Corp., whose chief executive, Rex Tillerson, once famously dismissed corn-based ethanol as "moonshine." Exxon announced in July it was investing $600 million in an algae-to-fuel start-up, Synthetic Genomics Inc.
"It was a major signal to the biofuels industry," says Bruce Jamerson, chief executive of Mascoma Corp., a producer of cellulosic ethanol, which is made from inedible plant materials.
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Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Big Oil's Big Entrance
Ethanol Producer Magazine
November 2009
By Craig A. Johnson
Oil companies were noticeably absent during the ethanol industry boom from 2004 to 2007. Now, as some of those first-generation ethanol plants struggle to survive, Big Oil has begun to take an interest.
With the implementation of the renewable fuel standard (RFS) in 2003, a mandate to blend ethanol into gasoline was created, and the ethanol industry boomed. For the next several years, construction of ethanol plants accounted for most of the industry investment. Builders were in short supply, or booked for months in advance. Newspapers were filled with stories of ethanol plants going up across the Midwest. Many of them turned out to be just stories, but the build had begun and ethanol became a household word almost overnight.
Existing fuel producers and refiners, companies such as Royal Dutch Shell plc, BP plc and Exxon Mobil Corp., were initially caught flat-footed by the explosion of growth in the ethanol industry. "I don't know much about farming, I'm not an expert on biofuels, and there's not a lot of technology I can add to moonshine," Exxon Mobil Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson said at a Houston energy conference in May 2007. "There is really nothing we can bring to that whole issue. We don't see a direct role for ourselves with today's technology."
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Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Oil refiner says CO2 bill to cost it $7 billion a year
Reuters.com
Fri Aug 28, 2009 3:34pm EDT
By Timothy Gardner and Janet McGurty
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. climate bill would cost Valero, the country's largest oil refiner, more annually than it has ever made in a year, forcing it to warn consumers at filling stations that fuel prices will rise, the company's top government affairs official said.
"How would we be able to operate?" Jim Greenwood, a vice president for governmental affairs at San Antonio based-Valero Energy Corp, said about the legislation the House of Representatives narrowly passed in June. "I don't know."
He said the bill, which would require refiners to hold or purchase permits for the amount of carbon dioxide their plants and fuels produce, would cost Valero some $6 billion to $7 billion per year.
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Thursday, July 16, 2009
Exxon makes first big investment in biofuels
SFGate.com (San Francisco, CA)
By JOHN PORRETTO, AP Energy Writer
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
(07-14) 07:37 PDT HOUSTON, (AP) -- Exxon Mobil Corp. said Tuesday it will make its first major investment in greenhouse-gas reducing biofuels in a $600 million partnership with biotech company Synthetic Genomics Inc. to develop transportation fuels from algae.
Despite record-breaking profits in recent years, the oil and gas giant has been criticized by environmental groups, members of Congress and even shareholders for not spending enough to explore alternative energy options.
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Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Big Oil on biofuels prowl?
Biofuels Digest
July 03, 2009
Greenchipstocks neatly summarized a presentation by Don Paul, Executive Director of the University of Southern California Energy Institute, giving five reasons why Big Oil is “coming to cleantech,” and five more as to why Big Oil is headed for a major role in the renewable energy business. Notably, Paul was CTO of Chevron before joining the Institute.
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Friday, June 12, 2009
Delay new biofuels rule one year: U.S. oil industry
Reuters
Tue Jun 9, 2009 5:36pm EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The government should delay new rules that expand U.S. use of biofuels until 2011, the oil industry said on Tuesday, because there is too much work to do on the ground-breaking rules to start sooner.
The Environmental Protection Agency has a January 1 target to apply the rules that also require advanced biofuels to have greenhouse gas emissions that are 40 percent lower than petroleum from creation through consumption.
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Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Oil Giants Loath to Follow Obama’s Green Lead
The New York Times
By JAD MOUAWAD
Published: April 7, 2009
The Obama administration wants to reduce oil consumption, increase renewable energy supplies and cut carbon dioxide emissions in the most ambitious transformation of energy policy in a generation.
But the world’s oil giants are not convinced that it will work. Even as Washington goes into a frenzy over energy, many of the oil companies are staying on the sidelines, balking at investing in new technologies favored by the president, or even straying from commitments they had already made.
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Monday, March 23, 2009
Shell dumps wind, solar power for biofuels
The Pennisula
Friday, March 20, 2009-->Web posted at: 3/19/2009 8:45:35
Source ::: THE GUARDIAN
LONDON: Shell will no longer invest in renewable technologies such as wind, solar and hydro power because they are not economic, the Anglo-Dutch oil company said today. It plans to invest more in biofuels which environmental groups blame for driving up food prices and deforestation.
Executives at its annual strategy presentation said Shell, already the world’s largest buyer and blender of crop-based biofuels, would also invest an unspecified amount in developing a new generation of biofuels which do not use food-based crops and are less harmful to the environment.
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Wednesday, February 18, 2009
An Unlikely Mix Of Oil And Ethanol
KELOLand TV (Sioux Falls, S.D.)
02/13/2009
It's been touted as the alternative to oil, but after the country's largest ethanol producer went bankrupt America's biggest oil refiner is looking to invest in the renewable fuel.
VeraSun announced this week that Valero Energy of San Antonio Texas is interested in buying five of the company's ethanol plants.
"I know everyone would be nervous about big oil showing up in South Dakota and owning a plant over at Aurora," University of South Dakota Professor Emeritus of Economics Dennis Johnson said.
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