Beeville and Bolivia: Brotherhood of Boneheads
A few days ago, a fellow Texas blogger took the oil industry to task for paying out billions in dividends instead of reinvesting that cash in new oil and gas projects. If you've wondered about that yourself, you might want to view Bolivia's decision to nationalize (a euphemism for "steal") its natural gas fields. In one fell swoop, the government is forcing foreign companies to walk away from more than $4.5 billion invested over the past ten years in Bolivian infrastructure and producing properties. And these investments were made in one of the more stable and accessible parts of the world.
This is just one example of how the investment of significant amounts of capital and technical expertise will be appropriated in the short term in other South American countries such as Venezuela, Peru, and Ecuador. Bolivia has already announced plans to take over the crude oil and mining industries next, and all foreign owned private property thereafter.
I'm sure we're witnessing the creation of the next world-class power, as hundreds of thousands of skilled Bolivian geoscientists, engineers, and financial wizards will rush to fill the void left by the exodus of the foreign dullards who have been stealing them blind.
Which brings us to Beeville, the town in south Texas which has decided to bring ExxonMobil to its knees -- or at least to $1.30 gasoline -- via a boycott of the local filling stations. Well, actually, there's nothing to tie the good citizens of Beeville and Bee county to the Bolivian story other than my love for a good alliterative headline. Well, other than the fact that both are examples of the kind of wrongheaded lunacy that has made the oil bidness into a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of industry.
Personally, I wouldn't blame any of the oil majors for just liquidating the whole shootin' match back to the shareholders and letting Bee county strike a deal with those good ol' boy jobbers in Bolivia for their future fill-ups.
Heck, I think they ought to hold out until Exxon pays them to take their gasoline!
I remember a price war in Bryan-College Station back in the early 70s...19 cents a gallon. Don't think I ever saw it that low before or since. But, alas, no glasses.
Posted by: Eric at May 2, 2006 10:03 PMThis morning. Exxon-Mobil CEO Tillerson went one-on-one with Matt Lauer, in a Q&A session about gasoline prices ... but also about the operation of an oil-and-gas major ...
http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?f=00&g=ff00584c-2c8b-4956-a73d-42897bd23f2a&t=m5&p=Source_Today%20Show
Made for good listening/viewing ... not much devoted to Beeville, I'm afraid ... but a good presentation, nonetheless, on more substantive issues ...
Jeff, thanks for the link, but it's not available to Mac users (requires IE 6, for which there is no Mac version).
Posted by: Eric at May 3, 2006 12:11 PMAbout the publisher
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The lunacy in this world is indeed astounding, especially when it comes to oil. But, of course, it is written in the constitution that every US citizen has the God given right to cheap fuel for their Hummers.
The people in Beeville, [are they called Bees?] want Exxon to roll the price back to $1.30/gal. I say hogwash! Let's roll it back to the price from the days of my youth, 29 cents a gallon. And back then you'd get a free set of kitchen glasses if you bought 10 gallons or more.
Posted by: Wallace-Midland, Texas at May 2, 2006 09:59 PM