Steve Bull's Blog, page 1232
December 13, 2017
Exxon To Disclose The Real Risk Of Climate Change
ExxonMobil finally conceded to the multi-year campaign by shareholders and activists to disclose its risk to climate change, a notable departure after years of trying to dismiss the issue.
According to a new filing by Exxon to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Exxon said that its board “has reconsidered the proposal requesting a report on impacts of climate change policies” by major shareholders at its annual meeting earlier this year. The company will disclose more information regarding “energy demand sensitivities, implications of two degree Celsius scenarios, and positioning for a lower-carbon future,” the company’s filing stated.
The pressure from activists and shareholders to disclose more information related to Exxon’s vulnerability to climate change are the latest in a series of headwinds over the past few years, Bloomberg writes. The oil supermajor has also had to contend with its inability to find and replace all of the oil and gas reserves that it produces in a given year, and for several years in a row, that reserve-replacement ratio has been under 100 percent, an indication of a declining reserve base.
Also, Exxon’s total oil and gas production has actually declined in four of the last five years—Bloomberg calculates that Exxon averaged 4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d) in the first nine months of 2017, down from 4.51 mb/d in 2011. Part of that is because of Exxon’s size—a depletion rate that leads to the erosion of several percentage points from a rather large number is still a large number.
On top of that, Exxon’s shale activity is only beginning to ramp up, having spent billions to acquire acreage earlier this year. Bloomberg says that these obstacles now have Exxon trading at a discount relative to other energy companies in the S&P 500 Index, the first time that has occurred in 20 years.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Cyberattacks: The Biggest Threat To OPEC
Oil and cybersecurity in one sentence certainly makes for a thrilling read, and there will be an increasing amount of information on the topic as the Internet of Things expands and the global oil industry adopts automation and digital technology.
OPEC is no exception in this digitalization drive, but unlike its non-OPEC counterparts, the cartel has emerged as much more vulnerable to cybersecurity threats.
An analysis of data collected from 134 countries by the International Telecommunication Union has revealed that some of the world’s biggest oil producers, including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran, and the UAE, are lacking in the cybersecurity department. This means that, compared to European producers and the United States, OPEC members are pretty much unprepared for a major cyberthreat.
What is the likelihood of such a threat actually materializing? Well, the general opinion in cybersecurity circles is that everything that can be hacked will be hacked at some point. Saudi Arabia’s oil and gas industry, for example, has been a favorite target for numerous attacks over the last few years, including the Shamoon virus, which in 2012 wiped clean the disks of more than 30,000 computers at Aramco, and according to reports from the cybersecurity industry, reared its ugly head again in 2016.
Overall, about half of all cyberattacks in the Middle East target the oil and gas industry, which suggests the answer to the above question is “Pretty high,” but the worse thing is that this likelihood is only going to get higher in the future. Related: Brent Spikes As This Major Pipeline Breaks Down
Middle Eastern producers are following in the footsteps of their non-OPEC counterparts in adopting digital technology and automation to improve efficiencies in the post-2014 world, where efficiency has come to the fore in oil and gas. The problem, of course, is that the more you digitalize, the more vulnerable you become to attacks through digital channels.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Could Central Banks Dump Gold in Favor of Bitcoin?
All of which brings us to the “crazy” idea of backing fiat currencies with cryptocurrencies, an idea I first floated back in 2013, long before the current crypto-craze emerged.
Exhibit One: here’s your typical central bank, creating trillions of units of currency every year, backed by nothing but trust in the authority of the government, created at the whim of a handful of people in a room and distributed to their cronies, or at the behest of their cronies.
And this is a “trustworthy” currency?
Exhibit Two: central banks can’t become insolvent, we’re told, because they can create as much currency as they want, whenever they want. And this is a “trustworthy” currency?
Exhibit three: and here’s what happens when trust in the currency is lost due to excessive currency issuance: the currency goes from 10 to the US dollar to 5,000 to $1 and then to 95,000 to $1, on its way to 2,000,000 to $1:
Yes, this was once a “trustworthy” currency.
While many people expect China to issue a gold-backed currency some day, they overlook the inconvenient reality that China is creating far more fiat currency than it is adding in gold reserves. They also overlook that gold-backed means nothing if the currency isn’t convertible into gold.
If it isn’t convertible, it isn’t gold-backed. Claiming there’s gold somewhere in a vault doesn’t make a currency gold-backed, as the central bank can devalue the currency it issues at will. Gold-backed means the currency is pegged at X units of currency to 1 unit of gold, and X units of currency can be exchanged for 1 unit of gold.
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Switzerland is Prepared for Civilizational Collapse
More than any other country, Switzerland’s ethos is centered around preparing for civilizational collapse.
All around Switzerland, for example, one can find thousands of water fountains fed by natural springs. Zurich is famous for its 1200 fountains, some of them quite beautiful and ornate, but it’s the multiple small, simple fountains in every Swiss village that really tell the story. Elegant, yes, but if and when central water systems are destroyed these fountains are a decentralized and robust system for providing everyone with drinkable water.
The Swiss political system is also decentralized. If the central government fails, the Swiss might not even notice. The mountains and valleys also mean that Swiss towns and villages are geographically independent yet linked in a spider-web of robust connections.
Despite being at peace since 1815, Switzerland is prepared for war. Swiss males (and perhaps females in the future) are required to serve in the military (those who cannot, pay a special tax) creating a robust reservoir of trained citizens ready to serve in an emergency.
The Swiss have been tunneling the Alps for hundreds of years creating innumerable secret hideaways for people and stores.
As a further example of how ridiculously well prepared the Swiss are for any and all threats, there are things like hidden hydroelectric dams built inside of unmarked mountains so that in the event of mass bombings, they’ll still have electricity from these secret facilities. And, remember, these are the things the Swiss government has let us know about. It is thought that there are probably more fortifications and hidden goodies scattered about the country’s landscape. (ital. added, AT)
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CNN & MSNBC Attempt Coverup of Bogus Story They Started
CNN & MSNBC refuse to provide any transparency on how they blew a major anti-trump story.
The headline image is from the BBC story Russia-Trump: Who’s who in the drama to end all dramas?
The BBC names the key players, but it missed one: the media.
On December 9, Glen Greenwald at the Intercept reported The U.S. Media Suffered Its Most Humiliating Debacle in Ages and Now Refuses All Transparency Over What Happened.
I covered the story in Trump Accuses CNN of Purposeful Fake News “Fraud on American Public”.
In a nutshell, three news outlets, starting with CNN and followed by MSNBC broke a bombshell story on Trump that false. CBS jumped on the bandwagon but later blamed CNN.
Supposedly, multiple, credible sources said Trump had access to Wikileaks information on Russia before Wikileaks posted it.
The story timeline was false.
Coverup Begins
Days later, CNN refuses to disclose its sources or say what happened.
Greenwald blasted CNN in a Tweet again today.
[image error]Glenn Greenwald
@ggreenwaldSlate notes that because CNN & MSNBC completely refuse to provide even the most minimal transparency about how they got their big story so wrong, we still don’t know the answer to the key question – and probablynever will, since they’re burying it: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/12/medias-wikileaks-trump-jr-email-date-screwup-still-unexplained.html …
7:47 PM – Dec 11, 2017
[image error]
We Still Don’t Know Why Three Different Outlets “Confirmed” the Same Bogus Russia Story Last Week
Why did so many “sources” suddenly confuse the numbers 14 and 4?
slate.com
How Did It Happen?
The Slate reports We Still Don’t Know Why Three Different Outlets “Confirmed” the Same Bogus Russia Story Last Week.
“None of the outlets disclosed anything about the identities and/or motivations of the sources—and there are supposedly at least two of them!—who made such a consequential error of reading comprehension.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Natural Variability isn’t the Final Word on Climate Science
Photo by NASA Goddard Space | CC BY 2.0
Politicians recently visiting western Montana’s Lolo Peak fire tried to put the blame for the fire on lawsuits filed by environmentalists. Montana’s US Senator Steve Daines did mention the role of climate change, but quickly went on to say that the climate has always changed.
Well, yes, for sure. Changes in Earth’s temperatures and resulting climate have often been driven by forces beyond human control, and many such changes occurred well before humans existed. These familiar natural forces have changed the climate from hot to cold and from cold to hot, all without a lick of help from man, woman or child.
For example, it’s become plain that large volcanic eruptions can cast killing chills across the planet, crushing crops and making people miserable. For another example, El Niño—perhaps the most widely known expression of natural variability—periodically releases ocean heat that has a rippling effect across much of the planet.
So, yes, Daines’ remark wasn’t entirely hot air. Natural forces are clearly capable of changing the climate.
A recent attention-getting study turned up evidence that an earlier planetary hot spell was driven by volcanic magma under an extensive Siberian coalfield. Geologists put that initial study to the test and have twice confirmed that the hot magma scorched the coal above, thereby releasing lots of carbon into the atmosphere, which then increased atmospheric and oceanic temperatures. The resulting heat created extinctions long before there were humans to blame.
It’s the real world out there, with more than one thing going on at a time, so it’s no shocker that the forms of natural variability don’t always act alone.
One recent study cites evidence that natural variability in the form of a sulfur-loaded volcanic eruption may have had its cooling influence on North America complicated by the warming influence of another natural variation, El Niño.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Fed’s Great Unwind: Will It Sink Us?
In the eyes of many people, the Federal Reserve (Fed) is an indispensable institution. We are told it supports growth and employment, fends off the negative shocks, and fights inflation. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Fed’s fiat money regime is economically and socially highly destructive — causing far-reaching societal and political consequences that extend beyond what most people would imagine.
Fiat money is inflationary, it debases the purchasing power of money; it benefits a few at the expense of the many; it causes boom-and-bust cycles that hurt many people economically; it makes people run into too much debt, leading to over-indebtedness; it corrupts society’s morals; it makes government grow at the expense of individual liberty; it encourages the state’s aggressiveness and fuels its war machine.
Tragically, however, people consider falsely the Fed as their “knight in shining armor” coming to their rescue in times of trouble rather than what the institution really is: the very source of economic and societal grievance. People do not blame the Fed for the trouble it causes, but instead welcome Fed action for overcoming the damage it has caused in the first place. That is why many people keep their fingers crossed that the Fed’s latest “exit plan” will succeed.
The Fed’s Exit Plan
In the course of the financial and economic crisis of 2008–2009, the Fed lowered interest rates to basically zero. It also increased its balance sheet from $879.4 billion at the end of 2007 to $4.5 trillion in September 2017. It did this by purchasing US Treasuries and agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in the amount of $2.4 trillion and $1.7 trillion, respectively, thereby having injected additional ‘base money’ into the US banking system.
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December 12, 2017
Mark Carney Forced To Explain Surge In UK Inflation To Highest In Almost 6 Years
The market expected Mark Carney to avoid it but it was just not meant to be.
The BoE Governor will suffer the ignominy of a bizarre tradition of having to write a letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer explaining why UK inflation is more than 1.0% above the target of 2.0%. The market had expected the UK CPI to rise by a modest 0.2% month-on-month, taking the year-on-year rate up to 3.0%. Instead the month-on-month rate hit 0.3% pushing the annual rate to 3.1%, its highest rate since March 2012.
As Bloomberg writes, “U.K. inflation unexpectedly accelerated to the fastest in more than 5 1/2 years in November, forcing Bank of England Governor Mark Carney to explain why price growth is so far above target. Consumer prices rose 3.1 percent from a year earlier, driven by the cost of air fares and computer games, the Office for National Statistics said on Tuesday. That’s up from 3 percent in October and the highest since March 2012.”
The latest reading means Carney is now compelled to write to Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond explaining why inflation is more than 1 percentage point away from the official 2 percent target. The letter will be published alongside the BOE’s policy decision in February, rather than this week, as the Monetary Policy Committee has already started its meetings for its Dec. 14 announcement.
Rising costs of airfares along with petrol and energy prices were expected to have been offset by an easing in food and clothing price pressures, the latter helped by seasonal promotions. However, the price of computer games rose more than expected and higher chocolate prices saw food and non-alcoholic drink prices rise 4.1% versus November 2016, the highest level since 2013.
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100,000 Still Stranded Amid California Fires; Giant Thomas Fire Only 20% Contained
In an unexpected run of good fortune, a shift in the powerful winds that have fanned the SoCal wildfires over the past week and a half has pushed the Thomas Fire – the largest of the six uncontained blazes – away from nearby communities while also clearing the air of smoke, improving visibility for the beleaguered firefighters working tirelessly to suppress the flames. Meanwhile, further south, firefighters have managed to achieve upwards of 90% containment for the Rye, Lilac and Creek Fires:
View image on Twitter
[image error]CAL FIRE
#RyeFire [update] off Rye Canyon Loop, west of Valencia (Los Angeles County) remains 6,049 acres and 96% contained per @LACoFDPIO. http://www.fire.ca.gov/current_incidents/incidentdetails/Index/1924 …
10:14 PM – Dec 11, 2017
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Russia-gate’s Litany of Corrections
Exclusive: As much as the U.S. mainstream media insists that the Russia-gate scandal is growing, what is undeniably growing is the list of major corrections that news outlets have been forced to issue, reports Robert Parry.
The U.S. mainstream media’s year-long hysteria over Russia’s alleged role in the election of Donald Trump has obliterated normal reporting standards leading to a rash of journalistic embarrassments that have both disgraced the profession and energized Trump’s backers over new grievances about the MSM’s “fake news.”
Misguided groupthink is always a danger when key elements of the Washington establishment and the major news media share the same belief – whether that is Iraq’s supposed possession of WMD or the need to bring down some foreign or domestic leader unpopular with the elites.
Yet, we have rarely witnessed such a cascading collapse of journalistic principles as has occurred around the Russia-gate “scandal.” It is hard to keep track of all the corrections or to take note of all the dead ends that the investigation keeps finding.
But anyone who dares note the errors, the inconsistencies or the illogical claims is either dismissed as a “Kremlin stooge” or a “Trump enabler.” The national Democrats and the mainstream media seem determined to keep hurtling down the Russia-gate roadway assuming that the evidentiary barriers ahead will magically disappear at some point and the path to Trump’s impeachment will be clear.
On Friday, the rush to finally prove the Russia-gate narrative led CNN — and then CBS News and MSNBC — to trumpet an email supposedly sent from someone named Michael J. Erickson on Sept. 4, 2016, to Donald Trump Jr. that involved WikiLeaks offering the Trump campaign pre-publication access to purloined Democratic National Committee emails that WikiLeaks published on Sept. 13, nine days later.
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