Sympathy For The Oil Industry: Diminishing Returns Start To Hit Home

[phantom power]

Later in March, Jim Mulva, CEO of ConocoPhillips admitted that seeking new oil reserves was not a money making venture. According to Chris Nelder, on Seeking Alpha:
On March 25, ConocoPhillips (COP) CEO Jim Mulva admitted that pursuing new oil reserves just doesn't pay. The remaining resources have become too marginal and too expensive, and the competition for them has become too intense.

Rather than keep slugging it out with bigger and better-funded players in pursuit of growth, Conoco has decided to sell $10 billion worth of its assets over the next two years, all of them in the marginal category, and concentrate on producing its core assets.

The proceeds will be used to buy back its stock, reduce its debt, and raise dividends — just as rival ExxonMobil (XOM) has been doing for the last five years or so.

The risks of searching for oil offshore were brought home this week with the explosion and sinking of the Transocean Ltd. oil-drilling rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico.

http://www.countercurrents.org/wild240410.htm

[cutlassmama]

1. They'll only pass the costs onto the little people that buy gas. They'll

never hurt because they are corporations don't cha know?

[aquart]

2. Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. Poor fellas.

I am so not buying this. Is Whiny Sunday a new national holiday?

[Titanothere]

3. What's not to buy? He's merely stating his business plan.

Why does everything have to be a grand conspiracy?

American oil companies (that pay the salaries of American workers by the way) have to compete with government sponsored companies like CNOOC, who don't need to make a profit, for resources. It's getting less profitable to explore for increasingly scarce and difficult resources so they're adjusting they're strategy. The natural evolution of which will likely be to increase efficiency and explore alternate forms of energy in order to make money because they choose to, not because some bureacrat forces them to.

[Terry in Austin]

4. Writing on the wall

More evidence that oil extraction is a "sunset industry" -- and they know it.

[4dsc]

5. Can you see the end of the age of oil coming??

Won't be long now folks. If you are under the age of 30 you will witness the end of the age of oil for sure.