[MCN] Interesting times for Big Oil

[Lance Olsen]

Financial Times: Energy Source: a weekly briefing

Corporate crunch
By Pilita Clark
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Quote of the week "Moving to a credible path away from disaster is 
imaginable and economically beneficial" -
Martin Wolf on the upside of addressing climate change
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The collapse in global oil prices produced a spate of gloomy news 
from the oil and gas industry this week, as some of the sector's 
biggest names released their latest results. It started with a slide 
in profits at BP, which set out long term cost-cutting plans spanning 
several years to help it cope with a prolonged period of $60 a barrel 
oil.

Then came news that Royal Dutch Shell would take a $2bn writedown 
after cancelling its Carmon Creek oil sands project in Canada, and 
that Norway's Statoil had put back the start date for its $7bn 
Mariner field, the biggest North Sea project in more than a 
decade. By Friday morning, the UK-listed BG Group had reported a 
sharp fall in earnings, with more bad news finishing the week in the 
US from ExxonMobil and Chevron.

Not everyone in these companies was dwelling on oil prices this week. 
Some were poring over the draft text of the new global climate change 
agreement due to be brokered in Paris in December, which was 
finalised in sometimes testy UN negotiations in Bonn at the end of 
last week. An official UN report found the pledges to cut greenhouse 
gas emissions that countries have made so far for the Paris agreement 
will not be enough to stop risky levels of global warming.

And the sullen tone of the Bonn talks has underlined the pressure 
negotiators from nearly 200 countries will face in Paris. As John 
Kerry, the US secretary of state, wrote on Thursday: "Success in 
Paris is not a given".

This weekend, the UN global warming debate shifts to Dubai, where 
envoys from around the world will gather to debate how to get rid of 
hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, the artificial chemicals used in 
air-conditioners, refrigerators and other appliances that can be far 
more potent than greenhouse gases, even if they are not as 
common. Getting a deal on these fast-growing gases has proved elusive 
but if the Dubai meeting is a success it will boost hopes of 
achieving a broader climate accord in Paris a few weeks later.

Read more of our coverage at www.ft.com/energy

Quote of the week
"Moving to a credible path away from disaster is imaginable and 
economically beneficial" - Martin Wolf on the upside of addressing 
climate change
-- 
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" The increase in interaction diversity with the beetle outbreak adds 
to growing evidence
that insect outbreaks can increase components of biodiversity in 
forest ecosystems at various
temporal scales."

Kristina L. Cockle and Kathy Martin. Temporal dynamics of a commensal 
network of cavity-nesting vertebrates: increased diversity during an 
insect outbreak. Ecology, 96(4), 2015, pp. 1093-1104






















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