Latest news with #Exxon
The Sun
17 hours ago
- Business
- The Sun
US axes 24 clean energy projects, including at Exxon's Baytown
WASHINGTON: The U.S. has axed awards to 24 green energy projects issued during President Joe Biden's administration that totaled more than $3.7 billion, including one at an Exxon refinery complex in Texas, the Energy Department said on Friday. The administration of President Donald Trump has said it is evaluating publicly funded awards and loans issued to emerging technology projects during Biden's administration. It's occurring as the Trump administration pursues the maximization of already record-high oil and gas output while dismantling swaths of Biden's policies on climate and clean energy. The Office of Clean Energy Demonstration awards for carbon capture and storage and other technologies the department axed include nearly $332 million to a project at Exxon Mobil's Baytown, Texas refinery complex, $500 million to Heidelberg Materials, US in Louisiana, and $375 million to Eastman Chemical Company in Longview, Texas. The Baytown award was meant to cut carbon emissions by enabling the use of hydrogen instead of natural gas for the production of ethylene, a feedstock used in producing textiles and plastic resins. The department said nearly 70% of the awards had been signed between the November 5, 2024, election day and January 20, Biden's last day in office. The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Carbon capture projects aim to help curb climate change by removing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide directly from the air or from the pollution streams of facilities, including refineries and plants that burn coal and make ethanol, for storage underground. Sometimes the gas is injected into aging oil fields to push out remaining crude. Environmental groups focused on energy decried the cuts. Steven Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, said the move was short-sighted and could stifle innovation. 'Locking domestic plants into outdated technology is not a recipe for future competitiveness or bringing manufacturing jobs back to American communities,' Nadel said. The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions estimated that the cuts to the projects, meant to be test cases for huge industrial programs, could result in the loss of 25,000 jobs and $4.6 billion in economic output.
The Sun
17 hours ago
- Business
- The Sun
US axes $3.7b in Biden-era green energy project awards
WASHINGTON: The U.S. has axed awards to 24 green energy projects issued during President Joe Biden's administration that totaled more than $3.7 billion, including one at an Exxon refinery complex in Texas, the Energy Department said on Friday. The administration of President Donald Trump has said it is evaluating publicly funded awards and loans issued to emerging technology projects during Biden's administration. It's occurring as the Trump administration pursues the maximization of already record-high oil and gas output while dismantling swaths of Biden's policies on climate and clean energy. The Office of Clean Energy Demonstration awards for carbon capture and storage and other technologies the department axed include nearly $332 million to a project at Exxon Mobil's Baytown, Texas refinery complex, $500 million to Heidelberg Materials, US in Louisiana, and $375 million to Eastman Chemical Company in Longview, Texas. The Baytown award was meant to cut carbon emissions by enabling the use of hydrogen instead of natural gas for the production of ethylene, a feedstock used in producing textiles and plastic resins. The department said nearly 70% of the awards had been signed between the November 5, 2024, election day and January 20, Biden's last day in office. The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Carbon capture projects aim to help curb climate change by removing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide directly from the air or from the pollution streams of facilities, including refineries and plants that burn coal and make ethanol, for storage underground. Sometimes the gas is injected into aging oil fields to push out remaining crude. Environmental groups focused on energy decried the cuts. Steven Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, said the move was short-sighted and could stifle innovation. 'Locking domestic plants into outdated technology is not a recipe for future competitiveness or bringing manufacturing jobs back to American communities,' Nadel said. The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions estimated that the cuts to the projects, meant to be test cases for huge industrial programs, could result in the loss of 25,000 jobs and $4.6 billion in economic output.
Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
What's likely to survive from Biden's climate law? The controversial stuff.
Dig down about a mile or two in parts of the United States and you'll start to see the remains of an ancient ocean. The shells of long dead sea creatures are compressed into white limestone, surrounding brine aquifers with a higher salt content than the Atlantic Ocean. Last summer, ExxonMobil sponsored week-long camps to teach grade school students from Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi about the virtues of these aquifers, specifically their ability to serve as carbon capture and sequestration wells, where oil, gas, and heavy industry can bury harmful emissions deep underground. In one exercise, students were given 20 minutes to build a model reservoir out of vegetable oil, Play-Doh, pasta, and uncooked beans. Whoever could keep the most vegetable oil (meant to represent liquified carbon dioxide) in their aquifer, won. This kind of down-home carbon capture boosterism is a relatively new development for the oil and gas giant. Over recent years, ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies have spent millions lobbying for government support of what they see as industry-friendly green technology, most prominently carbon capture and storage, which many scientists and environmental activists have argued is ineffective and distracts from eliminating fossil fuel operations in the first place. According to Exxon's website, it's evidence that they are leading 'the biggest energy transition in history.' Now that Congress has turned its attention to rolling back government spending on renewable energy, it appears that most of the climate 'solutions' being left off the chopping block are the ones favored by carbon-intensive companies like Exxon. Corporate tax breaks for carbon capture and storage, for instance, were one of the few things left untouched when House Republicans passed a budget bill on May 22 that effectively gutted the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, the Biden administration's signature climate legislation. What remained of the IRA's clean energy tax credits were incentives for nuclear, so-called clean fuels like ethanol, and carbon capture. When the IRA was passed in 2022, there was immediate backlash against the provisions for carbon capture. 'Essentially, we, the taxpayers, are subsidizing a private sewer system for oil and gas,' said Sandra Steingraber, a senior scientist at the nonprofit Science and Environmental Health Network. The tax credits for nuclear power plants, which produce energy without emitting greenhouse gases, are meant to spur what President Donald Trump hopes will be an 'energy renaissance,' bolstered by a flurry of pro-nuclear executive orders he issued a day after the budget bill cleared the House. Projects will be able to use the tax credits if they begin construction by 2031; wind and solar companies, however, will lose access to tax credits unless they begin construction within 60 days of Trump signing the bill, and are fully up and running by 2028. That the carbon capture tax credit was never in danger of being revoked is a testament to its importance to the oil and gas industry, said Jim Walsh, the policy director at the nonprofit Food and Water Watch. 'The major beneficiaries of these tax credits are oil and gas companies and big agricultural interests.' The carbon capture tax credit was first established in 2008, but the subsidies were more than doubled when it was tacked on to the IRA in order to get former Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia's vote. Companies now receive $60 for every ton of CO2 captured and used to drive oil out of the ground (a process known as 'enhanced oil recovery') and up to $85 for a ton of CO2 that is permanently stored. As roughly 60 percent of captured C02 in the United States is used for enhanced oil recovery, detractors see the tax credit as something of a devil's bargain, a provision that props up an industry at taxpayer expense. How much carbon is actually captured by these projects is also a matter of debate. The tax credit requires companies that claim it to self-report how much CO2 they inject to the Internal Revenue Service. The Environmental Protection Agency, meanwhile, is in charge of tracking leaks. There are tax penalties if captured carbon ends up leaking, but those penalties only apply if the leaks occur in the first 3 years after injection. Holding companies accountable is made more complicated by the fact that tax returns are confidential, and Walsh cautions that there is very little communication between the EPA and the IRS. Oversight is 'very, very minimal,' added Anika Juhn, an energy data analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a research firm. 'You can keep some really played out oil fields going for a long time, and you can get the public to pay for it,' said Carolyn Raffensberger, the executive director of the Science and Environmental Health Network, explaining the potential impact of the budget bill. 'So the argument is, 'This is a win for the climate, it's a win for energy dominance.' [But] it's really a budget buster with no guardrails at all.' Existing carbon-capture facilities have been plagued by technical and financial issues. The country's first commercial carbon capture plant in Decatur, Illinois, sprung two leaks last year directly under Lake Decatur, which is the town's main source of drinking water. When concentrated CO2 hits water it turns into carbonic acid, which then leaches heavy metals from rocks within the aquifer and poisons the water. Although a certain level of public health concerns come with many emerging technologies, critics point out that all of this risk is being taken for a technology that has not been proven to work at scale, and may actually increase emissions by incentivizing more oil and gas production. It could also strain the existing electrical grid — outfitting a natural gas or coal plant with carbon capture equipment can suck up about 15 to 25 percent of the plant's power. The tax credits exist 'to pollute and confuse people,' said Mark Jacobsen, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, who has argued that there is essentially no reasonable use for carbon capture. They 'increase people's [energy] costs and do nothing for the climate.' But the technology does have its defenders among scientists. The 2022 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called an increase in carbon capture technology 'unavoidable' if countries want to reach net-zero emissions. Jessie Stolark, the executive director of the Carbon Capture Coalition, an umbrella organization of fossil fuel companies, unions, and environmental groups, contends that arguments like Jacobsen's unnecessarily set the technology against renewables. 'We need all the solutions in the toolkit,' she said. 'We're not saying don't deploy these other technologies. We see this very much as a complementary and supportive piece in the broader decarbonization toolkit.' Stolark said that carbon capture didn't make it out of the budget process entirely unscathed, as the bill specified that companies could no longer sell carbon capture tax credits. So-called 'transferability' — the ability to sell these tax credits on the open market — has been invaluable to small energy startups that have struggled to secure financing in their early stages, according to Stolark. The Carbon Capture Coalition is urging lawmakers to restore transferability now that the bill has moved from the House to the Senate. Still, the kinds of companies likely to claim carbon capture tax credits — often major players in oil and gas, ammonia, steel, and other heavy industries — are less likely to rely on transferability than more modest companies (often providers of renewable energy), whose smaller tax bills makes it harder for them to realize the value of their respective tax credits. 'A lot of the factories, the power plants, the industrial facilities deploying within the next ten years or so, are expected to be these really big [facilities] with the big tax burdens,' said Dan O'Brien, a senior modeling analyst at Energy Innovations, a clean energy think tank based in San Francisco. 'They're not the type of smaller producers — like small solar companies — that are reliant on transferability in order to monetize the tax credit.' To some observers, keeping the carbon capture credit looks like a flagrant giveaway to the oil and gas industry. Juhn estimated that the credit could end up costing taxpayers more than $800 billion by 2040. Given the House bill's aggressive cuts to social programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Juhn finds the carbon capture credit offensive. 'When we look at these other programs, where we're nickel and diming benefits to folks that could really use them, what does that mean? It's gross.' This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What's likely to survive from Biden's climate law? The controversial stuff. on May 30, 2025.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Exxon Leads $1 Trillion Stabroek Dispute as Chevron Awaits Ruling
Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) edged lower despite senior VP Neil Chapman declaring the company the favorite in a $1 trillion Stabroek oil-field arbitration against Chevron (NYSE:CVX). Chapman told investors that London's three-member panel wrapped hearings this week and is expected to rule in Exxon's favor within two to three months, affirming its right of first refusal on Hess's (NYSE:HES) 30% stake in the Guyana joint venture. Chevron's proposed $53 billion acquisition of Hess last year would have handed it control of Stabroekhome to roughly 11 billion barrels of recoverable reserves and a key growth driver for both companies. Exxon owns 45% of Stabroek, while China's Cnooc holds 25%. A loss in arbitration could force Exxon to cede its position or renegotiate the deal; a win could prompt Chevron to abandon or rebid the transaction. Either outcome carries massive strategic stakes given Exxon's $444 billion market cap and Chevron's 13% share-price slide over the past year. Investors should care because the panel's verdict will reshape the competitive landscape in deepwater oil, potentially reallocating one of the sector's richest assetsand swinging momentum between two of Big Oil's powerhouses. With the ruling expected by late summer, markets will be watching for any early commentary from the tribunal or preemptive deal shifts by either Exxon or Chevron. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Exxon (XOM) Set to Sell French Assets Stake for €400 Million
According to Bloomberg's May 28 report, Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE:XOM) is preparing to significantly reduce its footprint in France, having entered into exclusive discussions to sell its majority stake in Esso SAF to North Atlantic France SAS. The deal is valued at around €400 million ($350 million) for Exxon's nearly 83% share, which includes the Gravenchon refinery located in Normandy. This potential deal represents a strategic shift for Exxon as it lowers exposure to the European refining operations amid growing regulatory and economic headwinds. The deal is projected to close in the final quarter of 2025, pending regulatory and financial approvals. Katherine Welles / North Atlantic, a Canadian energy company, aims to transform the Gravenchon site into a hub for clean energy. It plans to utilize the existing infrastructure to scale up the production of low-carbon fuels and renewable energy. Despite the sale, Exxon will continue to supply crude oil to the Gravenchon facility under its current agreements. The company also plans to keep a part of its French commercial and marketing operations where it will continue to market some products including chemicals, synthetic lubricants, and other specialty fluids. This move is in line with Exxon's efforts to consolidate operations and shift its core focus away from certain European assets. In recent years, the company has sold its Fos refinery in France and is currently considering options for selling its stake in Germany's Miro complex. Exxon Mobil Corp. is engaged in the exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas. Apart from its upstream operations, it also manufactures energy, chemical, and specialty products. While we acknowledge the potential of XOM as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than XOM and that has 100x upside potential, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock. READ NEXT: The Best and Worst Dow Stocks for the Next 12 Months and 10 Unstoppable Stocks That Could Double Your Money. Disclosure: None. Sign in to access your portfolio
