“On the 15th anniversary of the BP blowout, the real takeaway is that oil companies that think they are ‘beyond petroleum’ are value destroyers for shareholders and for the environment.”

Every April commemorates BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill (April 2010). To the anti-energy Left, Deepwater Horizon is the epitome of oil-gone-bad, coming some 21 years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. It was not supposed to happen again, but ….

The sad facts of Deepwater Horizon will forever remain; the multiple failures behind the seafloor accident meticulously documented. But a paradox remains. Mighty BP, captained by John Browne, the leading “environmentalist” of the petroleum industry, created a corporate culture that resulted in lax safety and environmental protocols. By saving about $5 million out of $100+ million in drilling costs, the company ended up paying out in excess of $60 billion.…

“At the end of my career, I will take pride in knowing that Sunnova played a crucial role in accelerating the energy transition, the most significant challenge of our lifetime. I hope to leave a legacy that inspires others to continue this essential journey towards a lower carbon future, knowing that we’ve made a meaningful impact.” – John Berger (2023 winner)

Sunnova Energy is too broke to be bankrupt. John Berger has resigned as CEO of the company he founded in 2012. Billions of dollars of subsidy from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Department of Energy were not enough for a company engaged in legal plunder.

Rooftop solar contracts from his company promising long-term service are in limbo. Berger, meanwhile, fears possible congressional hearings on where all the money went.…

This week, a Hall of Shame business memo turns 27 years old. Dated December 12, 1997, it was written from Kyoto, Japan, by Enron lobbyist John Palmisano in the afterglow of the Kyoto Protocol agreement.

Global green planners were euphoric that, somehow, someway, the world had embarked on an irreversible course of climate control (and thus industrial and land-use control). But Kyoto predictably failed, and the Paris climate accord of 2015 teeters, with COP27’s recent failure making COP28’s prospects look grim.

Palmisano’s memo cites the benefits for first-mover ‘green’ Enron. Enron, in fact, had no less than six profit centers tied to pricing carbon dioxide (CO2)–and seven if CO2 were capped and traded. The story of Enron as the darling of Left environmentalists has been well told elsewhere.…

“City leaders should stop pretending Houston will, or should, transition away from oil and gas anytime soon…. Houston should embrace its role in sustaining and improving the lives of literally billions of people globally each day. It’s a legacy worth standing up for… and even celebrating.” (Doug Sheridan, below)

Hyperbole and government subsidies (bribes, to critics) is the lifeline for inferior energies (think dilute, intermittent, resource-intensive wind and solar). Such as been the case since the 1990s in Houston, Texas when Ken Lay of Enron Corp. empowered executive Robert Kelly to create a new renewables business, a story told here.

And shame-on-shame that some Houston business leaders that should know better have embraced low-density, political energies. I am thinking of Bobby Tutor, chair of the Houston Energy Transition Initiative, and Steve Kean of the Greater Houston Partnership.…