With Only a Paltry $10 Billion Profit for 2017 Chevron Goes Begging for Hardship Consideration
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How is a company expected to survive on such meager earnings, I ask ya?
By Marc J. Rauch
Exec. Vice President/Co-Publisher
THE AUTO CHANNEL
 Marc J. Rauch |
This tale concerns an outfit called Chevron, originally born in an oilfield outside of Los Angeles under a different name before the turn of the last century. The infant produced a scrawny 25 barrels a day of crude oil. In 1879, a California State Assemblyman named Charles Felton, along with some associates, scrapped together a million bucks to buy this property to form a company called Pacific Coast Oil Company. Within a short period of time, Pacific Coast Oil became the largest oil interest in California, and Charles Felton became a U.S. Congressman and then U.S. Senator - wow, what a coincidence that must have been. I'm sure that in that time before the discovery of oil scandals like the Teapot Dome Affair that there was no political string-pulling on behalf Felton's oil company. ;)
In 1900, Pacific Coast Oil was 'adopted' by a new father, the kindly old John Davidson who happened to have another petroleum prodigy called Standard Oil.
As we all know, John D was forced to break up his sweet little family into a ragtag assemblage of entities known by various names, such as Esso (now Exxon), Mobil, Amoco, Conoco, and Chevron. You can imagine how difficult life was for these poor orphans.
Well, these plucky, humble entities limped along all these years barely eking out existences. And guess what? HUMBLE was another of the Standard Oil names, isn't that another remarkable coincidence?
So here we are, the day before Thanksgiving 2018, and we learn that the EPA (the United States' Environmental Protection Agency) just recently approved a HARDSHIP waiver for Chevron Oil for 2017. In responding to this report, Brian Jennings, CEO of American Coalition for Ethanol, told Energy.Agwired.com: “Chevron posted net profits of nearly $10 billion in 2017. On what planet does that constitute the 'disproportionate economic hardship' threshold needed to help justify a Small Refinery Exemption?”
The Energy.Agwired.com story also quoted Geoff Cooper, CEO of Renewable Fuels Association: "When an oil company whose net profits surpass the total value of the Iowa corn crop claims it is experiencing ‘hardship,’ you know we’ve reached a new level of absurdity."
David Blume, author of "Alcohol Can Be A Gas" and CEO of Blume Distillation explains what the Small Refinery Exemption actually means:
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"An exemption from having to add ethanol to the fuel to reduce toxic emissions from gasoline because the ethanol purchases might somehow economically hurt the oil company. Never mind that ethanol sells for a lower
price than gasoline so they actually are making more profit on it, or that they are being allowed to emit poison that is ruinous to our health just to make more money. So what they are actually obtaining is an exemption
from anti-trust laws and creating a hardship for farmers."
I agree. The absurdity of this situation would be too ridiculous for even Woody Allen to make a movie about.
Have a great Thanksgiving; hug and kiss your parents, children, spouse, significant other, close friends, and pets; and say a little side prayer to hope that we finally put an end to the death and destruction wrought by the petroleum oil industry.
*QUEEN FOR A DAY was an American radio and television show that aired from the 1940's to the 1960's. It had a game-show format, and it featured different women telling hardluck stories about their family. The daily winners, which were determined by an audience applause meter, would receive a bunch of gifts intended to make their lives better. The show was eventually cancelled because it was considered tasteless, demeaning, insulting, and utterly degrading to the human spirit. Taking everything into consideration that we know about petroleum oil companies and their fuels these characteristics describe perfectly how the petroleum oil industry treats the public every single day.
SPEAKING OF CHEVRON... Two months ago, a division of Chevron published a sponsored story blaming ethanol for problems with boat engines. The Auto Channel replied to that story with an open letter to Joe Defina, Chevron Lubricants' Fuel Additives Business Manager. My reply can be found by CLICKING HERE. Needless to say, no one representing Chevron or Mr. Defina ever replied.
