Exxon’s Rating and Credibility Gets a Downgrade: Standard & Poor’s cut ExxonMobil’s AAA rating on Tuesday, a move that the oil giant had been fighting against since S&P's warning in February.
The downgrade follows a series of decisions under
CEO Rex Tillerson that set the company back, including a making major bet on natural gas before the market collapsed, a partnership with a Russian crude driller that left $1 billion stranded, and
$54 billion spent on stock buybacks despite the company's growing debt load.
Yet these missteps were secondary to concern that Exxon isn’t finding new discoveries to replace its oil production.
“In our view, the company’s greatest business challenge is replacing its ongoing production,” said S&P.
Adding to Exxon’s bad day, DeSmogBlog also revealed that the Canadian affiliate of Exxon knew since the late 1970s that CO2 pollution was a global threat and yet Exxon continued to actively fuel climate change denial.
Documents published yesterday reveal the strongest warnings about the dangers of fossil fuels yet, saying, “there is no doubt that increases in fossil fuel usage…are aggravating the potential problems of increased CO2 in the atmosphere.” The memo was distributed internationally to managers across Exxon’s corporate offices. (
DeSmogBlog, National Observer, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal $, USA Today, Forbes, Reuters, CNBC)
As you saw with the
Schlumberger stock repurchase SCAM to keep the stock price from cratering, Exxon is even deeper in this effort to fool the stock market. A glance at the year to date performance of Exxon compared with just about every oil pig out there is proof that they have been gaming the price. $54 billion can do a LOT of gaming!
The
EXXON stock price has been ARTIFICIALLY PADDED
to keep it from dropping about 25% (just look at the one year performance of all the other oil pigs to see what I mean).