Why Putin took Crimia for ExxonMobil Gas/Oil Deals

[mitty14u2]

Exxon Mobil puts Ukraine gas prospect on hold

Rex Tillerson, Exxon Mobil’s chairman and CEO, said the company’s Russian projects were moving ahead.

“As for the current situation, obviously it’s early days,” he said. “There’s been no impact on any activities or plans at this point, nor would we expect there to be any, barring governments taking steps beyond our control.

“In terms of our view of country risk, geopolitical risk, other than things like sanctions, we don’t see any new challenges out of the current situation,” he said.

Exxon Mobil signed a giant joint venture agreement with Russia’s Rosneft in 2011 that opened the way for exploration in seven Russian Arctic Sea areas, parts of Western Siberia and a strip along the Russian Black Sea near Crimea.

http://www.dallasnews.com/business/energy/20140305-exxon-mobil-puts-ukraine-gas-prospect-on-hold.ece

Exxon Mobil teams up with Russian company in Arctic deal

MOSCOW -- Russia's state-owned Rosneft teamed up with U.S. company Exxon Mobil on Tuesday in a multibillion deal to develop offshore oil fields in the Russian Arctic -- one of the last regions with immense and untapped hydrocarbon deposits -- in return for access to resources in the Gulf of Mexico.

Exxon Mobil said in a statement that Tuesday's agreement includes $3.2 billion to be spent on exploring three giant undeveloped oil and gas fields in the Kara Sea -- between the northeastern corner of continental Russia and the Arctic archipelago of Novaya Zemlya -- in the Arctic as well as a sector in the Black Sea.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, right, and Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil's chief executive smile during a signing ceremony in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russia Tuesday. Russia's state-owned Rosneft teamed up with U.S. company ExxonMobil on Tuesday to develop huge offshore oil fields in the Russian Arctic in return for access to resources in the Gulf of Mexico.

http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2011/08/exxon_mobil_teams_up_with_russ.html

Only one company made more than ExxonMobils $45 Billion in 2013, Russian State Oil Company Rosneft. Oil and Greed gave the Bush Administration Crazy power to invade Iraq for more oil, Russians new found money in oil is giving crazed Putin God like enthusiasm for war ExxonMobils backing in money, power and advise.

Big Oil has bought much of Washington and states politicians across the country one way or another with oil money from ExxonMobil to Koch Bros. Will the Evil Greed keep winning like Bush scam election? It looks like many people love money more then truth or even God himself, anything Goes with the GOP’s price tag on everything imbolding plutocrats like Russians Putin knowing whom to buy in Washington and corporations that run politics without conscious, scruples or ethics of any kind.

[mitty14u2]

1. Reid blames Ukraine standoff on Kochs

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Thursday accused Republicans of holding up crucial assistance to Ukraine in order to protect the Koch brothers.

Reid tied the billionaires David and Charles Koch, who have bankrolled conservative causes, to GOP demands that language delaying the Internal Revenue Service’s regulation of nonprofit political advocacy groups be added to the Ukraine package.


“It’s hard for me to comprehend how with a clear conscience they could say, ‘Ukrainians, we probably can’t help you because we’re trying to protect the Koch brothers,’” he said on Thursday. “And not only that, they’re saying to the American people that protecting the Koch brothers is more important than helping our country.”

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/200716-reid-blames-ukraine-standoff-on-koch-brothers

Five 501(c)(4) Groups That Might Have Broken the Law

The real scandal has been the blatant abuse of 501(c)(4) status by dozens of lobbyists and operatives who have set up such tax-exempt organizations as political slush funds to conceal money in political campaigns. Since the Citizens United decision, 501(c)(4) groups, have operated as Super PACs—raising and spending tens of millions in corporate funds—without disclosing a dime of their contributors. IRS rules state that the primary activity of such groups cannot relate to political advocacy, yet examples abound of 501(c)(4) groups spending well over 50 percent of their funds on attack ads, political action committees and other clearly political expenses.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/174458/five-501c4-groups-might-have-broken-law

The Republicans Blocked $1 Billion to help Ukraine after the $15 Billion from Putin was pulled back as he took over Crimia, they want the $Hundreds of Millions in tax-exempt organizations laws changed or the word "Exclusively" to keep up the buying of politicians across the country. Issa opened this can of worms, now the cronies are trying to put them back in the can but this has already started smelling like rotting worms.

[mitty14u2]

2. Will Exxon's 'Bromance' With The Kremlin Help Keep Putin In Check?

Last summer Putin made it official; he awarded Tillerson Russia’s Order of Friendship. Friends, joined in their shared respect for just how hard it is to keep their oil and gas empires humming. Commiserating in the challenge of figuring out how to find growth when you’re already the biggest in the world.

Just as Putin is unlikely to give back Crimea, you can forget about a company as growth-hungry as Exxon willingly backing away from its Kremlin connections out of some perceived patriotic American duty. As Tillerson’s predecessor Lee Raymond famously said (quoted in Steve Coll’s book Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power): “I’m not a U.S. company and I don’t make decisions based on what’s good for the U.S.”

If the Obama administration were to place sanctions on Exxon preventing it from pursuing its Rosneft joint venture, it would be a significant blow to Putin’s long term ambitions of just maintaining, let alone growing, Russia’s oil and gas output. But it would also deal a significant blow to Exxon, which is counting on Russian volumes to help it maintain its own production levels in the decades to come.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2014/03/20/will-exxons-bromance-with-the-kremlin-help-keep-putin-in-check/?ss=business:energy

Rosneft buys stakes in Exxon Gulf of Mexico blocks

HOUSTON (AP) — Russian oil company Rosneft is buying a 30 percent share of 20 exploration blocks held by ExxonMobil in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/rosneft-buys-stakes-exxon-gulf-mexico-blocks

[kristopher]

3. Centralized control of energy has predictable results

Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken
AUTHOR: Lovins, Amory
DOCUMENT ID: E77-01
YEAR: 1976
DOCUMENT TYPE: Journal or Magazine Article
PUBLISHER: Foreign Affairs

In this landmark piece from 1976, Amory Lovins describes the two energy choices then facing the nation. There is the "hard path" and the "soft path". This path resembles federal policy of the time and is essentially an extrapolation of the recent past. The hard path relies on rapid expansion of centralized high technologies to increase supplies of energy, especially in the form of electricity. The second path combines a prompt and serious commitment to efficient use of energy, rapid development of renewable energy sources matched in scale and in energy quality to end-use needs, and special transitional fossil-fuel technologies. This path diverges radically from incremental past practices to pursue long-term goals. Lovins argues that both paths present difficult—but very different—problems. The first path is convincingly familiar, but the economic and sociopolitical problems then facing the nation loomed large and insuperable. The second path, though it represents a shift in direction, offers many social, economic and geopolitical advantages, including virtual elimination of nuclear proliferation from the world. For Lovins, it is important to recognize that the two paths are mutually exclusive. Because commitments to the first may foreclose the second, Loins argues that we must choose one or the other—before failure to stop nuclear proliferation has foreclosed both.

Download 278Kb
http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-Center/Library/E77-01_EnergyStrategyRoadNotTaken

[jakeXT]

4. Exxon is left in Crimea, because Shell jumped off in January

(Reuters) - Ukraine has picked a consortium led by ExxonMobil (XOM.N) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) to develop its Skifska gas field in the Black Sea, it said on Wednesday, as it seeks to wean itself off increasingly expensive Russian gas imports.

The project, whose total costs have been estimated by the government at $10-12 billion, is part of the former Soviet republic's plan to ease its dependence on gas imported from Russia, which amounted to some 40 billion cubic meters last year and accounted for nearly two thirds of the country's consumption.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/15/us-shell-exxonmobil-ukraine-idUSBRE87E0C320120815



Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A -0.5%) says it pulled out of negotiations over an offshore exploration agreement in the Black Sea west of Crimea in January.

The Ukrainian government announced the deal in 2012, but a Shell spokesman says the company still hadn't signed the agreement at the time it pulled out in January, while adding that Shell is still pursuing other Ukraine projects.

Shell was part of a group of companies including Exxon Mobil (XOM) that struck a deal with the Ukrainian government to develop the Skifska oil and gas field.

http://seekingalpha.com/news/1635493-shell-withdraws-from-ukraine-deal-near-crimea