By Paul Sankey
Published on October 8, 2020 at 9:15 AM
Chevron for ExxonMobil merger? The numbers and strategy make sense. Reduced costs, reduced capex, get through the dividend mess, and upgrade the overall player in ESG terms (mega-company suggested new name: “Chevron”). All year XOM has been breaking bad levels, and the latest is that its market cap fell below Chevron’s yesterday. Just a reminder on scale, with market caps equal at ~$140bn: XOM Capital employed $236bn and a feeble 6% ROCE in 2019. $31bn […]
Read More
By Paul Sankey
Published on September 30, 2020 at 5:45 PM
It was an especial pleasure to see a leader speaking at a podium with a TOTAL command of the current complex situation, with a complete grasp of facts and figures, a near-term and long-term vision that is both pragmatic and exciting. The fact that the entire presentation was delivered with charm and wit in the speaker’s second language, made it all-the-more impressive. I am of course speaking of TOTAL’s CEO Patrick Patrick Pouyanné , at the […]
Read More
By Paul Sankey
Published on September 10, 2020 at 2:19 PM
There is a conspiracy theory, totally unsubstantiated, that Nikola Tesla was in New York the day the Hindenburg airship crashed in 1937, and that had been asked to use an ion gun to bring down the airship and preserve the US helium monopoly, while denigrating flammable hydrogen, that the Hindenburg was forced to use, owing to the US monopoly. This of course is a wild, somewhat meaningless and certainly unsubstantiated conspiracy theory, but it fits […]
Read More
