Legacy has a lot to do with this. While both majors are born-again shale enthusiasts these days, Exxon has largely bought its way in, while Chevron is exploiting long-held acreage. The latter is the lower-cost option.
And Exxon's acquisitions included 2010's badly-timed XTO Energy Inc. deal, which has left it with a much bigger proportion of low-value natural gas in the mix. While Chevron's overall U.S. production is lower, its oil output is higher than Exxon's and increased 12.5 percent in the first quarter, year over year, versus just 2 percent for Exxon.Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on anything you read here or think you may have read here.
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Germany And Renewable Energy
This is a most incredible news story. One you will not find in the mainstream media. From JoNova:
Climate Worriers have the most terrible luck.
All the runes were lined up for Solar power — it is nearly free, pours from heaven, and millions of people seem to need energy “pretty often”. Plus universities and governments have gifted twenty years of free advertising about its Glorious Wonderfulness. Solar power is also used by the Celebrity Saints of Gaia thus filling fashionable, spiritual, and tribal needs. On a good day, it fills some megawatt needs too.
Despite all this, without forced payments from unwilling and unwitting non-users of solar power, investors are fleeing and the solar industry in Germany is collapsing. How can that be?!
After the German government decided to
reduce subsidies to the solar industry in 2012, the industry nose-dived.
By this year, virtually every major German solar producer had gone
under as new capacity declined by 90 per cent and new investment by 92
per cent. Some 80,000 workers — 70 per cent of the solar workforce —
lost their jobs. Solar power’s market share is shrinking and solar
panels, having outlived their usefulness, are being retired without
being replaced.
Wind power faces a similar fate. Germany
has some 29,000 wind turbines, almost all of which have been benefitting
(sic) from a 20-year subsidy program that began in 2000.
Starting in 2020, when subsidies run out for some 5,700 wind turbines, thousands of them each year will lose government support, making the continued operation of most of them uneconomic based on current market prices.
To make matters worse, with many of the turbines failing and becoming uneconomic to maintain, they represent an environmental liability and pose the possibility of abandonment.
No funds have been set aside to dispose of the blades, which are unrecyclable, or to remove the turbines’ 3,000-tonne reinforced concrete bases, which reach depths of 20 metres, making them a hazard to the aquifers they pierce.
Starting in 2020, when subsidies run out for some 5,700 wind turbines, thousands of them each year will lose government support, making the continued operation of most of them uneconomic based on current market prices.
To make matters worse, with many of the turbines failing and becoming uneconomic to maintain, they represent an environmental liability and pose the possibility of abandonment.
No funds have been set aside to dispose of the blades, which are unrecyclable, or to remove the turbines’ 3,000-tonne reinforced concrete bases, which reach depths of 20 metres, making them a hazard to the aquifers they pierce.
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Road Song
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