Big Oil (Occidental, Halliburton, ExxonMobil) COVID Bailout Well Under Way
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Along with being one of the biggest oil and gas producers in the U.S., Occidental Petroleum is also one of the largest oil and gas industry spenders on lobbying, according to Global Witness. The company—which had $20 billion in revenue last year—spent nearly $9 million on lobbying in 2019, trailing only Exxon, Chevron, and Koch Industries.
That’s been no different in the era of COVID-19. In April, the company “lobbied hard for both state and federal assistance,” Global Witness’s report said—including for a lucrative change to the Federal Reserve’s $600 billion Main Street Lending Program. The purpose of the program was “to help credit flow to small and medium-sized businesses that were in sound financial condition before the pandemic.” In late March, however, the Fed announced it would expand the program “to larger and riskier companies affected by the coronavirus pandemic.”
While it’s yet unclear if Occidental will get a direct loan from the program, the announcement caused the price of the company’s bonds to rise significantly. And Occidental does now qualify for a federal loan if it desires one, Americans for Financial Reform analyst Andrew Park noted on Twitter.
Link to tweet
Indeed, the expansion of the Fed’s coronavirus loan program was made specifically to benefit Big Oil companies like Occidental—and that’s fueling climate-related concerns about a larger bailout for the industry, Global Witness’s report says. “Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. was set to produce nearly two-thirds of all the world’s oil and gas over the next decade,” it says. “Yet the latest climate science shows that to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, there should be no production from new fields anywhere in the world.” But following the directions of climate scientists would be disastrous for companies like Occidental—which is why they continue to spend so much capital making sure politicians never do it. And so far, they are getting what they paid for.
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https://heated.world/p/the-big-oil-bailout-has-already-begun