« Tom DeLay, Revealed in His Tell-All, Tattle-Tale Book | Blog Index | UK National Security Priorities Similar To Ours--Oh Baby! »

Global Warming Saps Halliburton Profits

Halliburton reported yesterday that lower natural gas prices and less drilling in North America due to a late winter affected their first-quarter profits. In fact, Halliburton shares took their steepest dive in 8 months, dropping nearly 10%. The company is the "world's second-largest oilfield services company" and issues affecting them often herald industry-wide trends.

The slump in profits was caused, analyst James Halloran told Bloomberg, by a late winter (quite possibly global warming related). A late winter meant that the ground froze later, so heavy drilling rigs could not move across Canadian and northern US oilfields until later in the season. That translated into fewer completed drilling projects. Not to mention, with the warmest winter on record this year, people may be using less gas and oil to heat their homes.

"Last fall, there's no question there was a weather issue," Halloran said. "And prices have not been exactly booming for people. My guess is there's been some ongoing reluctance to get large drilling projects going again."

One of Halliburton's "large drilling projects" affected by the weather is in Alaska's North Slope, a place heralded by National Geographic as "largest remaining piece of US wilderness" Drilling in valuable wilderness areas is just one of the reasons Halliburton shareholder meetings are regularly protested. No wonder they moved their HQ to Dubai.

--Jen Phillips

Comments

Wow!! Halliburton losing money due to global climate disruption?! This may be too much schadenfreude for one person to handle. (Schadenfreudegasm has a nice ring to it.)

As we convert over to renewable energy sources, or go extinct for failure to do so, may Halliburton (and Exxon) go out in a blaze of anonymity.

Posted by: Misanthropic Scott on 03/22/07 at 4:39 AM

I believe el nino may have also had an effect.

Posted by: Cal Ulmann on 03/22/07 at 4:16 PM

I think our "late winter" was due more to El Nino as opposed to global warming, of which I am a non-believer.

Posted by: Michael Yawn on 03/22/07 at 4:57 PM

Michael Yawn,

First and foremost, when looking for whether to believe global warming, try http://scholar.google.com/ for searches on the subject. Unfortunately, the articles that come up are unlikely to be free. But, they usually have a good abstract, which may be enough.

Peer-reviewed scientific data shows a lot of discussion about the effects, especially the local ones, and projections of how much global warming we will see. But, there really isn’t any dispute at all about whether global warming is real.

Cal Ulmann,

The El Nino effects are becoming far more frequent and severe due to global climate disruption (a better term than warming, since the planet will not warm evenly).

Posted by: Misanthropic Scott on 03/23/07 at 4:22 AM

Note to the moderator: Is there any way that the postings that are in both blogs, the regular and the big blue marble, could be cross-linked? Why have exactly the same thread twice when we could have a single conversation with all points represented?

To anyone else posting on this topic, this topic is repeated at:

http://www.motherjones.com/blue_marble_blog/archives/2007/03/3931_global_warming_3.html

Posted by: Misanthropic Scott on 03/25/07 at 9:37 AM