Slashdot Mirror

It has gotten so bad, even the oil companies have fessed up. https://corporate.exxonmobil.c...

If you look under Research and Development you can find this page:

Advanced Biofuels
"ExxonMobil funds and conducts advanced biofuels research as an investment in new technologies that could increase energy supplies, reduce emissions and improve efficiencies."

Just go look at any major "oil" company website - I bet your bottom dollar their renewable investments are prominently displayed or easy to find.. bragged about for cred really.

I went to http://corporate.exxonmobil.co... and there was not a single mention about investments in renewables.

Myth: BUSTED.

The cities attorney was quoted as saying:
"Our litigation forced a public court proceeding on climate science, and now these companies can no longer deny it is real and valid."

I actually wonder who he's referring to. BP a major investor in Wind power in the USA, who's CEO is pushing for a price to be put on carbon? Royal Dutch Shell a major investor in electric charging infrastructure? Chevron with their work on Solar power? Conoco Phillips who have published on their homepage: "We recognize that human activity, including the burning of fossil fuels, is contributing to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere that can lead to adverse changes in global climate.". Or maybe Exxon who have published a page dedicated to the very art of not denying climate change is real and valid http://corporate.exxonmobil.co....

Congratulations San Francisco! What a .... errr ... win?
Now can we please eliminate the San Francisco city attorney who is constantly expelling CO2 while contributing nothing at all of value to society.

Source:
https://www.ecowatch.com/clima...

The government outspends any company hundreds to one in this area

That's 100% false.

https://www.statista.com/topic...:

Oil (and gas) companies are among the largest corporations worldwide. Among the top ten companies worldwide based on revenue, six are in the oil industry. In 2016, Anglo-Dutch giant Royal Dutch Shell reported almost 234 billion U.S. dollars of revenue. Thus, Shell was the third-largest company worldwide based on revenue in 2015. ExxonMobil from Irving, Texas generated a revenue reporting some 219 billion U.S. dollars in 2016. However, ExxonMobil claims the highest market value within this industry, as well as having the second-highest market value of all companies worldwide in 2015.

https://www.nationalpriorities...:
In fiscal year 2015, the federal budget is $3.8 trillion.

So, no, the fossil fuel industry is probably larger than the entire US budget, making your statement 100% false.

Your statistics did not address the expenditures for climate change research in any way. They are a meaningless comparison between the gross revenue of oil companies and the total US federal budget.

Try reading the income statement for Exxon Mobile and learn the difference between gross revenue and net income. https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/...

In 2015 Exxon Mobile gave about 8 million dollars to public policy and policy research groups of all kinds
http://cdn.exxonmobil.com/~/me...

The US government 2014 budget for climate change expenditures was over $21B
https://obamawhitehouse.archiv...

The Church of Carbontology now sues EPA for survival (they need state power to make their moral misery a monopoly, like any church)...instead of dreaming up new ways to sue Exxon et al for an endless sinecure by said fiat.

You mean the Exxon that acknowledges AGW? Congratulations, son. That was the hardest failure I've ever seen on Slashdot, and I've seen a lot.

Big Oil is not investing in solar power, wind turbines or storage technology which will be the choice of alternative energy for now. Why should they invest in fusion?

Are you sure about that?

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Big Oil is; The supermajors are considered to be BP plc, Chevron Corporation, ExxonMobil Corporation, Royal Dutch Shell plc, Total SA and Eni SpA, with ConocoPhillips Company also sometimes described in the past as forming part of the group.

http://www.bp.com/en/global/co...
https://www.chevron.com/corpor...
https://lubes.exxonmobil.com/L...
http://www.shell.com/energy-an...

Perhaps you should get with the times, "Big Oil" has been investing heavily in renewables for years. But I guess that doesn't fit in your world view, so it is much more convinient to rage about how horrible big oil wouldn't invest in renewable energy. As for fusion, that is a harder question to answer, you would have to actually look into the investors behind each fusion energy project. My guess is that those nasty big oil companies are heavily investing into fusion, as that is what energy companies to.

As ray also points out, you are so far off base it is actually laughable. All those links above took me 30 seconds to find.

"tonyheller" claims NOAA is omitting data from the graph on page 10 to hide it. "Here is why they are hiding the rest of the data." This is obviously NOT TRUE because satellite data doesn't go back before 1979 and the radiosonde is being compared with the satellite data in the graphs. "tonyheller" is either stupid or intentionally attempting to mislead his readers. Look for yourself: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/...

"tonyheller" CLEARLY has an agenda. Why would you listen to anything else he says after his failure demonstrates either a) incompetence in technical analysis or b) deceit to support an agenda What else could it be?

"I will never believe government climatologists, they obviously have an agenda, it's not true science." Who do you believe and why? Have you considered that it's not just the scientists in the United States government claiming AWG is happening? Practically every reputable scientific organization on the planet makes the same claim. Do you consider a world wide collusion of scientists even possible? And for what? Grants?

As for government climatologists, there's not much capitalist motive to study climate. Government is one of few entities that exist more than 50 years, the minimum time required to study climate change. I think the people spouting don't believe government scientists know this and realize this leaves people with "not enough untainted data" to make a decision. Uncertainty and delay is their goal.

There are a few non-government entities that have an interest in climate and have been around long enough to accumulate and study data. Exxon Mobil admits AGW is a real threat. http://corporate.exxonmobil.co...

That's simply not true. Esso is an Exxon-Mobil brand. See http://corporate.exxonmobil.co... Shell refers to Royal Dutch Shell, an entirely different company...

Business and state are one, regardless of the form it takes.

Did you have a chat with "Exxon" over coffee about this?

Kinda... And now they say they are shutting down the rig for the winter (or have Rosneft keep it running), while the US government picks up some political hay during election time with its "sanctions" dog and pony show. This is the ebb and flow of currency from one market to another, traders make their money, and then it flows the other direction. Rich Russians are making a killing also.

Discrediting scientists (and by extension science) is going to be paying dividends for a long time. I wonder how quickly it'll accelerate the USA's loss of leadership in the sciences.

Here is one of the "dividends". Exxon and their shills have been casting scientists as venal, incompetent fools for about two decades now, then suddenly they are alarmed that they can't hire any competent scientists...

You're missing the point.

The people telling us that we're heading for disaster are the ones with financial stake in it. The larger their possible financial gain, the louder they make the noise. You've gone on and taken what you've heard for granted without bothering to check the sources, telling yourself "He works in a dentist office and wears a doctor's coat. He must know teeth better than anyone. As long as I pay him enough to avoid dentures in my near future, we all win!"

The people that tell us we are not heading for disaster are the fossil fuel industries. Now, who has more money: Exxon Mobil or climate scientists funded by the NSF? Since you seem to have trouble with numbers, I'll do the math for you: a single fossil fuel company makes six times more annual profit than the entire national grant funding for all sciences.

You are right to ask the old question Qui bono?. I just can't figure out why you got the wrong answer. Maybe because you are an anonymous troll?

Handy link: http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/investor/board.html

The second part of your post was in ignorance I believe. Former AOL CEO, Former Verizon President, current Nokia General Manager, current CEO of Lucent ... that's not bad for "people who've run tech companies" ... could do a lot better, could do a lot worse.

The first part of your post was right on. Not enough diversity on HP's board of directors. Need at least one director from non-profit company, one from academia, and preferably another active CEO. If you want diversity in a board of directors for a profitable company, lookup Exxon-Mobil's board of directors --> http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/investor_governance_directors.aspx

To the GP's post ... HP's board of directors has changed 6 of its 13 members this year alone (counting the new CEO).

Not so much the oil companies these days. Even Exxon admit it. It mostly seems to be Libertarians and conservatives who don't believe it because they don't like the implications.

The oil companies aren't dumb. They're covering all the bases: a reasonable public face for PR purposes, and behind the scenes, lots of money channeled to libertarian "think tanks" to spread anti-global-warming memes.

Not so much the oil companies these days. Even Exxon admit it. It mostly seems to be Libertarians and conservatives who don't believe it because they don't like the implications.

Oil companies are slimy. Hasn't anyone else noticed this Exxon commercial that's been showing up on Hulu lately... the one where they talk about strides being made to improve our domestic oil economy but do so by touting their oil sands project in Canada, our largest oil importer? http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/news_ad_us11_oilsands.aspx

So far there has been a huge hurdle to overcome in the production of biofuels with algae; contamination. Quite a few things grow in the same medium as biofuel algae and the algae that produces biofuel is easily overwhelmed. According to this page, http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/news.aspx , Exxon is still at the research phase and not in production.

What are you talking about? The site cites its sources, and no, it's not based on "medical study" or "scientific research" -- because it's pulled directly from a primary source. It's in fact pulling raw data from the group in charge of crime and punishment. Either the violent toys and video games of today are bad but are being overshadowed by some massive unnamed good, or violent toys and video games have bad effects that are not crime-related, or they aren't really that bad on average.

Also, Esso's site really isn't that bad. They're an oil company so they are promoting oil technology solutions, but it's not like they're denying that climate change is an issue.

.
I know "Big Oil" is a favorite whipping boy of the political left, but really, isn't a ~80% tax rate high enough? How much more do you demand?

Rather, the war was about having an excuse to drive up the price of oil, which benefits... all of the oil companies. Who runs the oil companies? Mostly friends of Bush and his cronies.

Who makes the most profits on Big Oil? Take ExxonMobil for example. Of the $142 billion in pre-tax profit they made, $101 billion went to the Government.

Put another way, for every $1.00 that ExxonMobil made in profit, the Government made $2.50.

And who owns ExxonMobil? Less than 1% of ExxonMobil is owned by insiders (managment). Over 99% of ExxonMobil is owned by individual investors, mutual funds, and retirement funds. That $40 billion in profit they made last year? $39.6+ billion belongs to the stockholders. And ExxonMobil pays you a dividend, and you can sell their stock to get your cash back. You probably own ExxonMobil if you're invested in a mutual fund.

I know its oh-so-progressive to attack Big Oil because of their record profits (which come from their record sales volumes); even Congress likes to do it. But the real beneficiary - at least financially - is the Government.

Just remember next time you're filling up, probably $1.00 to $1.25 of each gallon you buy is going to the Government. The oil company selling you the gas is making around 10% - Government is making 25%.

Oh, and instability in the Middle East? We invaded in 2003. By 2006 Iraq had really settled down. But the price of oil has tripled since then, and gas has doubled. As Iraq and instability is decreasing, costs are increasing. I thought the new Democrat Congress was going to lower our gas prices - that's what Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D - CA) promised, and that's what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D - NV) promised.

It's not tension over the Middle East that's causing the increase in oil - it's that worldwide production has not kept up with demand. And fundamentally it is because of our reduced production, here in the US. We now pump only 40% of our own oil.

You do know that we have approximately two TRILLION barrels of oil in the US that is currently locked up by that same Congress. That same Congress, who's leaders promised to lower the price of gas back in 2006, who have presided on a doubling of oil and gas prices, won't let us access the world's largest oil reserves.

Put those reserves in perspective. At a daily consumption rate of 20 million barrels of oil, that is (2 trillion / 20 million) 100,000 days of consumption available. That is 273 YEARS of consumption. The US would have enough oil for nearly the next three centuries - longer than the US has existed as a nation - if Congress would let us access it.

We have literally more oil in the US - available to produce for under $50 per barrel, than the entire Middle East's proven reserves. Oil costs in the US could be cut by 65% - gas would be down under $1.40 per gallon if Congress was serious about fuel and energy costs.

Who's manipulating the market to keep their profits high? Well, the Government seems to get most of the profit, and they're responsible for locking up the biggest deposits in the world. I think the real racketeers and obscene profit takers are plainly obvious. It's the ones asking the questions at those mock trials of the oil execs, not those answering.

Yes, those excessive profits. Never mind that for every $1 in profit EXO makes they pay $3 in taxes. So let's really aim that 'middle finger' squarely where it belongs - the Government.

- Total revenues of $404 billion
- Sales based taxes of $31.7 billion
- Other taxes and duties of $41 billion
- Income taxes of $29.9 billion

That's a total of $102.6 billion in taxes on revenues of $404 billion, or a little over 25% of revenue.

Now look at their net income: $40.6 billion. Meaning that for every buck of taxes and profit, EXO gets to keep $0.28 and the Government gets $0.72. Even if you look at just income tax on gross profit, you're looking at a 42% tax rate.

EXO pays a LOT more taxation than most people realize. Understand that $100 billion is more than 40% of all the individual taxpayers in the US - COMBINED. And those "windfall profits" they're getting? Seems that the Feds are getting a LOT more windfall than EXO.

As far as return goes, they're not make 32% - they're making, at best, 10%. Sell $400 billion, keep $40 billion. That's a far cry from 32%...

For the environmental damage, let's charge wind with the damage from mining all that copper, steel and aluminum. Solar with the chemicals needed to make them. Both with the oil needed to run their systems, and on and on... If you want to get extreme, you can make ANYTHING look bad.

The fundamental point is that solar and wind - as they exist today - are FAR from economically viable. And the supposed boogyman of "Big Oil" is getting 1/100th of the subsidies of wind and solar, in terms of payments versus output gained.

By all means, I support research into wind and solar, but to foist it upon us before it's economically viable is insanity. Keep researching, and when you can get the subsidies down to the range of nuclear ($1.59 per MWhr) then we can consider it...

Oil companies don't seem to pay $200B/year. The $3 of taxes for every dollar of profit is also unlikely.

From the Exxon-Mobil 2006 annual report: $39.5B profit (after taxes). $30.3B "sales-based taxes" and $39.2B "other taxes and duties". So we're already at less than a 2-to-1 taxes to profits.

But it gets better. Go down to the "liabilities" section, and the "income taxes payable" section is only $8B. Another $20.8B is listed as "deferred". I looked at earlier reports, and it's a striking pattern: They claim to incur two to three times more tax liability every year than they actually seem to pay.

I don't fully understand what's going on there, or what sort of taxes fall under "sales" and what falls under "other", but I know that if I was making a 32% return on my money every year, and the IRS let me defer most of my tax burden for even a year, I'd call that a huge tax break.

There's another subsidy you could argue over: estimates of the economic damage caused by the global warming effects of each barrel pumped range all over the map, but $50/barrel isn't unreasonable. Factor that in, and the oil companies are actually operating at an enormous loss.

Then you have the I-can't-believe-this-isn't-obvious principle: pulling natural resources out of the ground doesn't generate wealth. From an accounting standpoint, it should be considered capital depletion, not income. To me, the oil industry as a whole is like a trust fund kid who says that going to the ATM is his "job".

On an unrelated note, the whole "baseload" problem is easily surmounted. Read up on concentrating solar power. Short version: sunlight heats a fluid, which drives a Stirling engine. The fluid doesn't go cold just because the sun goes down. Hell, with a big enough, insulated enough reservoir, it could probably produce for weeks without input. Additional heat input could also come from burning natural gas.

However, I found another reference to that article which contained a few excerpts, notably:

oil industry profits from preferential treatment in tax laws and government support. While the non-oil industries are taxed at a rate of 18 percent, the oil industry is taxed at a mere 11 percent.

Which is provably false. Take a look at 2007 ExxonMobil Annual Report in which (on page 38 of the report, 40 of the PDF) you'll find EXO paid $32 billion in sales taxes, $41 billion in other taxes and duties, and $30 billion in income taxes, for a tax load of $103 billion.

On that same page, you'll see total revenues of $404 billion. And a net income of $41 billion. Meaning that for every 4 dollars in revenue, EXO paid one dollar in taxes. And for every dollar in net income, they paid $2.50 in taxes.

All that adds up to a taxation rate of either 25% on revenues, or 71% of gross profit. How that report gets to 11% is - I guess - left to the reader. So if the first big claim of that report that I can find is provably false, where does that leave the rest of the claims made by the unknown article, such as canals being dredged for oil tankers only?

by a lobbying group funded by ExxonMobil

Offering nominal fees for paper and pen to write reports is one thing but when the incentive is a large percentage of my yearly income, I think Exxon should be ousted as scientifically backwards assholes.

I wonder if ExxonMobil is actually still funding the American Enterprise Institute. Late last year they announced their intention to stop funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and I was assuming (I know, dangerous) that they were going to stop funding all similar institutes. Here is their official try-to -please-everyone-without-admitting-any-guilt statement for those who are interested.

FYI... Their response: http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Files/Corporat e/letter_royal_society.pdf

ExxonMobil's Response to a Report by the Union of Concerned Scientists ExxonMobil believes the Union of Concerned Scientists' paper is deeply offensive and wrong. ExxonMobil engages in public policy discussions by encouraging serious inquiry, analysis, the sharing of information and transparency. Our support of scientific research on climate change is made public on our web site and it includes more than 40 peer reviewed papers authored by ExxonMobil scientists, and our participation on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and numerous related scientific bodies. While there is more to learn on climate science, what is clear today is that greenhouse gas emissions are one of the factors that contribute to climate change, and that the use of fossil fuels is a major source of these emissions. With regard to contributions that ExxonMobil provides to various public policy organizations, our support is transparent and appears on our web site. The support extends to a fairly broad array of organizations that research significant domestic and foreign policy issues and promote discussion on issues of direct relevance to the company. These groups range from the Brookings Institution to the American Enterprise Institute and from the Council on Foreign Relations to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. As these organizations are independent of their corporate sponsors and are tax-exempt, we don't control their views and messages, and they do not speak on our behalf. In many cases and with respect to the full range of policy positions taken by these organizations, we find some of them persuasive and enlightening, and some not. We annually review our support of tax-exempt organizations and make appropriate adjustments. In addition, we publish the complete list of such organizations on our web site - and we update this list once per year. Supporting scientific and public policy research leads to better informed and more open discussion of options to address such a serious, global issue as climate change. http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Newsroom/NewsR eleases/corp_nr_mr_climate.asp They provide me with an income. I'm happy with them. But this doesn't I agree with all their policies. I just fix their computers!

If you were looking for a balanced view point on the dangers of tobacco smoking 30 years ago, would you have gone to the cigarette companies or the think tanks they supported? If not, why would you go to the think tanks of oil companies (mainly, if not exclusively, funded by ExxonMobil) today? This is, of course, in reference to climateaudit.org, which seems to be mainly written by Stephen McIntyre, who is funded (albeit indirectly through the George Marshall Institute) by ExxonMobil. If you doubt the veracity of ExxonSecrets.org, feel free to verify it against Exxon's own "giving report".

With regards to Climate Science and Roger Pielke, if you actually look at his publications, you'll find that he does believe that CO2 contributes to significant climate change. He is just a little more agnostic than many of his fellow researchers as to the nature of that climate change. I'm not sure if you want to count him as your ally.

> So, it's not actually clear without hard numbers wether or not driving an electric car
> 500 miles requires more fossil fuels than driving a gasoline car 500 miles.

Fortunately, folks have done those calculations, such as here and here and here (pdf) for IC efficiency confirmation from a not-anti-oil source. Here (pdf) is another overview (from the standpoint of CO2 emissions, so electric vehicles come out even better, due to nuclear power and the like).

The short version is that all-electric vehicles are about twice as efficient as gas-powered vehicles -- 28% vs. 14% -- when considered "well-to-wheel" (i.e., start with crude oil/coal and go from there). So if you had enough gas to take a car 500 miles, you could burn the crude oil for electricity instead and drive an electric version of that car 1,000 miles.

All-electric cars have some problems, but overall energy efficiency is not one of them.

TechCentralStation is a publication of DCI, a PR firm based in DC. It is essentially an astroturf site, publishing articles and blog posts that support the views and desires of its clients, without readily disclosing their ties.

In 2003 Exxon Mobil gave TCS's nonprofit "Tech Central Science Foundation" $95,000 for "Climate Change Support". Here's Exxon Mobil's corporate giving report, detailing the "donation" (page 44): http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/files/corporat e/giving_report.pdf

Shortly thereafter, Bob Carter and others began writing articles for TCS like the ones linked from Exxon Secrets.

TCS has also run a lot of articles attacking generic medicines, especially in third world countries, as unsafe. TCSF, unsurprisingly, has received funding from PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry's lobbying organization.

Obviously it's difficult to prove a direct payoff from Exxon to TCSF to Carter. I think for most people, though, the circumstantial evidence is convincing enough.

CO2Science.Org is science? They use anecdotal evidence in an attempt to counter real science being performed by fairly independent labs.

Paraphrase from a front-page article on their website...
This town in Missouri is polluted as hell, and their temperature dropped 2 degrees in the past decade! Global warming? Clearly it doesn't exist!"

Of course, what do you expect from an "environmental" organization who is funded by Exxon and whose founder previously worked for the worlds largest coal company?

http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/files/corporat e/giving_report.pdf
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/ab out/chairman.jsp
http://www.peabodyenergy.com/

ExxonMobil's relationship with Saudi Arabia

Exxon seems to think otherwise.

Quote from the page: "Non-OPEC production is expected to peak in the next 10 years or so, with 70% of production from seven areas: Russia, the U.S., the North Sea, Mexico, Canada, China and Brazil."

Try this for a Tiger :

http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/About/History/ Corp_A_H_Tiger.asp/

I presume you have never taken even a basic course in economics. If so, you must have flunked.

Take a look at Exxon-Mobil's latest annual report (2003), which includes data for 2002 and 2001:

http://www.exxonmobil.com/corporate/files/corporat e/ExxonMobilAR2003.pdf

Skip down to the Summary Statement of Income on page 36. You'll find that for 2003, net income on revenues of $237 billion was $31 billion, or a gross profit margin of 13%. A third of that subsequently went to income taxes, leaving $21 billion, or about $3.15 per outstanding share of common stock.

So, for every dollar of revenue, ExxonMobil kept about 9 cents (after taxes). About a third of that was paid as dividends to shareholders, leaving 6 cents per dollar.

I suspect that few people would consider 6 cents to be "most" of a dollar.

Who said Dubbya invaded Iraq to lower your bills? He is not there for you, its for companies like XOM. A brief look at the stock charts of any major US oil company will tell the tale.

The oil industry has been moving away from only producing oil and gas. They are investing in other technology like Hydrogen and fuel cells. They know oil will run out some day and are working at moving on to other energy production technologies now.

Do you know how much a new drilling plant costs? A new off-shore rig? Probes? OPEC bureaucracy? How much did it cost in the 40's? 50's? 60's? 70's? 80's? 90's? This decade? We're talking billions and billions (of relative value).

Besides, there was an article not too many moons ago about do-it-yourself biodiesel for, what, $0.48 per gallon?

I agree to a point; the alternatives aren't that great right now (certainly much less useful than if they had been researched with proper funding from the 40's on out), but if even a small part of the research costs were diverted, a lot of things could happen. Here's a link to Exxon, who in 2002 spent $0.61 per barrel in research costs. I unfortunately don't have stats for barrel price but from the recent $40/barrel scare we can extrapolate that the cost was somewhere around $30/barrel back then. That means that the company spent around 2% in research. Here you can see the production: 2,400 thousand (2400000) barrels per day; a total of $864 million barrels per year, with a total price of a little over $25 billion, of which 2 percent would be approximately $500 million. For Exxon alone. $500 million. A year.

Do you know how much a new drilling plant costs? A new off-shore rig? Probes? OPEC bureaucracy? How much did it cost in the 40's? 50's? 60's? 70's? 80's? 90's? This decade? We're talking billions and billions (of relative value).

Besides, there was an article not too many moons ago about do-it-yourself biodiesel for, what, $0.48 per gallon?

I agree to a point; the alternatives aren't that great right now (certainly much less useful than if they had been researched with proper funding from the 40's on out), but if even a small part of the research costs were diverted, a lot of things could happen. Here's a link to Exxon, who in 2002 spent $0.61 per barrel in research costs. I unfortunately don't have stats for barrel price but from the recent $40/barrel scare we can extrapolate that the cost was somewhere around $30/barrel back then. That means that the company spent around 2% in research. Here you can see the production: 2,400 thousand (2400000) barrels per day; a total of $864 million barrels per year, with a total price of a little over $25 billion, of which 2 percent would be approximately $500 million. For Exxon alone. $500 million. A year.

Copyright 2004 Exxon Mobile. All rights reserved. This material may be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

You're right, something is fishy. ExxonMobil probably wouldn't spell thier own name incorrectly.

The large businesses/corporations of Japan have considerable influence in their government, moving beyond petty lobbying towards very strong and well-set puppet strings.

Fortunately, American companies don't influence our government.

Now who, I wonder, would be interested in smearing the "hydrogen economy" concept. Hmm.. I'm drawing a blank... .

This looks somewhat similar to Mobil's Speedpass, no?

Actuall, it is ExxonMobil. ;)

http://www.exxonmobil.com

Think you got that one backwards chief. :)

Could this be the beginning of the end for our dependence on oil?

I can think of many reasons why it won't.