Tag: SEC

DAVID BLACKMON: ExxonMobil Just Set The Climate Alarm Lobby On Fire Again

ExxonMobil set the climate alarm lobby afire last week when it filed a lawsuit against a pair of activist investor groups challenging manifestly frivolous shareholder initiatives which they hope to bring up at the company’s impending annual meeting in May. The suit was filed in a Texas court January 21 against Massachusetts-based investment firm Arjuna Capital and Amsterdam-based investor group Follow This.

From The DAILY CALLER

DAVID BLACKMON

ExxonMobil set the climate alarm lobby afire last week when it filed a lawsuit against a pair of activist investor groups challenging manifestly frivolous shareholder initiatives which they hope to bring up at the company’s impending annual meeting in May. The suit was filed in a Texas court January 21 against Massachusetts-based investment firm Arjuna Capital and Amsterdam-based investor group Follow This.

Reports filed by the AP, Reuters, CNBC and other legacy media sites warned that a win by Exxon in the lawsuit could have a “chilling effect” on the bringing of other climate alarm and ESG-related initiatives in the future. The reasoning supporting that claim seems somewhat specious, given that Exxon’s complaint is based on the fact that initiatives virtually identical to the ones sought by Arjuna and Follow This have been brought repeatedly in prior years and were resoundingly rejected in shareholder votes. Raising them again this year is an obvious waste of time and resources and amounts to little more than harassment.

These specific questions, in other words, have been asked and answered several times, leaving little point in raising them again just for the sake of raising them. That hardly would mean that a favorable decision for ExxonMobil in this lawsuit would chill activist investors from raising other, valid questions in the future, but that is the narrative the alarmist lobby and their supportive media have settled on. (RELATED: DAVID BLACKMON: The Biden Admin And Its Buddies Are Waging Foolish War Against Abundant Clean Energy)

Readers may wonder why the company decided to file suit against these two activist investors rather than pursue the more regular appeals process governed by the Biden SEC. The answer is pretty simple: President Biden’s appointees to the SEC decided to change up a decision process that had worked well for decades in order to make it far more difficult and bias the expected outcome in favor of the activist investors. Thus, as Reuters and other outlets note, fewer and fewer companies have pursued their appeals with the SEC over the past few years.

Here is what ExxonMobil said about it in an email to CNBC:  “The breakdown of the shareholder proposal process, one that allows proponents to advance their agendas through a flood of proposals, does not serve the interests of investors. We are simply asking the court to apply the SEC’s proxy rules as written to stop this abuse and eliminate the significant resources required to address them.”

Reuters quotes one of the SEC’s own commissioners, Mark Uyeda, as saying, “Companies could always go to court on shareholder proposals, but historically viewed the SEC as a fair arbiter. This perception may have changed due to recent policy changes.” Oh. You don’t say.

So, here’s the moral of this story: When a radical president brings in appointees who destroy a system that was seen as fair by all stakeholders for decades on end and render it a basic kangaroo court, stakeholders are going to seek ways to work around the system.

There is nothing at all wrong with ExxonMobil’s decision to file a lawsuit to block these frivolous proposed resolutions that serve no one’s interests and waste everyone’s time. The company has an absolute right to pursue all remedies available to it, including within the federal courts, even if it upsets the virtue signaling gentry in the climate alarm lobby.

This is neatly analogous to the situation at the Texas border with Mexico, where Biden came into office and immediately issued a series of executive orders that blew up a system of securing the border that had been working quite well and replaced it with a system that basically and intentionally opened the country up to unchecked mass illegal immigration. Now, the administration bemoans the fact that Texas and other states are finding ways to work around his refusal to do anything constructive to slow the flow.

When any presidential administration destroys a system that work and replace them with systems intentionally designed to fail, stakeholders are going to exercise their rights to seek other remedies. That’s all ExxonMobil is doing here, and it should not come as a surprise to anyone.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Broken Promises: “A profound slowdown” in Renewable Investment in Australia

Power prices are rising, despite recent political promises they wouldn’t, and renewable investment has stalled, despite frantic government efforts to attract new capital.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Power prices are rising, despite recent political promises they wouldn’t, and renewable investment has stalled, despite frantic government efforts to attract new capital.

‘Profound slowdown’: Alan Finkel quits Victoria’s SEC

Patrick Durkin BOSS Deputy editor
Jun 23, 2023 – 5.00am

Former chief scientist Alan Finkel has quit his role advising Victoria’s State Electricity Commission, as the organisation’s chief executive warned energy prices will rise, despite Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ election promise the SEC would bring down prices.

…

Chris Miller, appointed interim CEO of the SEC, acknowledged on Thursday the energy transition would cause a large uptick in energy prices, despite Mr Andrews’ election claims.

“We know that getting to 95 per cent renewables in Victoria will require a large uptick in billed build rates [see AFR correction below],” he told the conference.

…

But Mr Miller pointed to warnings by the CEO of the Australian Energy Market Operator, Daniel Westerman, and data from the Clean Energy Council that shows “a profound and recent slowdown in new financial commitments for large-scale user generation projects”.

“In fact, in the first quarter of this year there were no new financial commitments across the nation despite a strong pipeline of projects.”

…Read more: https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/profound-slowdown-alan-finkel-quits-victoria-s-sec-20230622-p5dijw

Part of this slowdown might be a perception that China’s economy is about to fall off a cliff. Australia is heavily dependent on the Chinese economy.

The problem afflicting China is for decades Chinese local officials have been running a Ponzi scheme, borrowing heavily to hit fake economic growth targets, squandering the borrowed money on useless infrastructure projects – to the tune of at least $18 TRILLION Dollars in outstanding Chinese local government debt. Much of that money was spent on purchasing raw materials from Australia to build all that pointless infrastructure.

But now, thanks to their crazy Covid lockdown, China has abruptly run out of cash. The Ponzi scheme is now fully exposed.

Prospects for Australian mineral exports to China are looking a little shaky.

We can only speculate why this public debt fuelled Chinese Ponzi scheme was allowed to grow to the point it threatens the stability of the Chinese state. I suspect it remained concealed for so long, because as local officials were promoted to central committee jobs on the basis of their fake economic achievements, their highest priority has been to conceal their personal financial malfeasance. They couldn’t expose their former underlings continuing the Ponzi scheme, without their own misdeeds being exposed. This has likely created a web of lies and concealment stretching all the way from local governments right up to the central committee.

In Western countries a free press usually uncovers and exposes such public sector financial disasters well before they become a national disaster, though arguably the Western press have been asleep on the job lately, at least when it comes to their handling of Democrat political scandals.

The dire financial distress in China has left Australia flailing. Most current federal and state governments are committed to massive expenditure on greening the Australia economy, but who in their right mind wants to lend money to a country which could be about to lose their biggest customer? As interest rates rise, as the Chinese economy falters, businesses across the country are tightening their belts in anticipation of the coming crash.

As for China, about the only move left in China’s playbook is to create a distraction big enough that people don’t notice their government has squandered all their money.

Whatever China decides to do, none of this bodes well for the Australian economy.

Of course the rapid approach of the Chinese export crisis hasn’t stopped our financially illiterate politicians from spending borrowed money like water, pushing forward with their Nut Zero plans. They’re still demolishing real power stations, offering what’s left of Australia’s manufacturing industry up like a grizzly Aztec sacrifice, perhaps in the hope the gods of green energy fantasies will smile on their mindless abasement.

h/t Nick – AFR has issued a correction: “Correction — An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that interim SEC CEO Chris Miller referred to “a large uptick in billed rates”. The correct reference should have been to “build rates”.” But given elsewhere in the article the AFR quotes an SEC estimate of $320 billion for Australia to transition to renewables, I don’t see how that changes anything. The $320 billion will have to be paid by consumers, either through increased bills or via increased taxes to service government borrowing.