Good morning; here's what the Oilman has for you today:

• Welcome to XOM Smackdown

• From Export Zero to Export Hero

• Tweet of the Day

Welcome to XOM Smackdown

Remember when we told you about how Norway’s sovereign wealth fund was pushing climate activist baloney at upcoming annual meetings…?

Yeah, well, they got pwned.

The shareholder meetings of Exxon and Chevron overwhelmingly rejected climate change-related petitions tabled by activist investors.

What was that sound?

It was the loud slap to the face of climate activists by Chevron and Exxon shareholders.

Are we witnessing the end of peak activism?

These results follow similar votes at the European supermajors’ meetings.

And that means a lot because the Europeans are much gReEnEr than the Americans in Big Oil.

To be fair, the reason they’re greener is stronger, more annoying climate activists.

Not strong enough, it seems: not one “climate” resolution tabled at their AGMs this year made it through the shareholder vote.

And this might mean that a positive change is in the air.

It might mean shareholders have just about had enough of emission reporting and cutting, and more targets, more net-zero commitments, and all that crap.

A shocking revelation

"There is no single oil major that really wants to transition. They all want to hang on to fossil fuels as long as possible," said Mark van Baal, the climate activist shareholder whose Follow This suffered all those defeats this meeting season.

Well, maybe that’s because they saw what happened to BP when it happily announced it would transition from Big Oil to Big Energy.

What happened was a lower share price as investors upped and left.

The business’ bottom line also suffered with lower-than-expected rates of return from the renewables business.

Maybe, just maybe…Exxon and Chevron don’t want this to happen to them.

From Export Zero to Export Hero

Crude oil and fuel exports out of the United States reached a record high in March, the EIA has reported, with the total at a whopping 11.27 million bpd.

Oil exports on their own were also at a record high of 4.8 million bpd.

Show me the money

In December 2015, the U.S. was exporting about half a million barrels of crude daily.

Then the federal government ended the export ban, and shipments abroad surged.

All thanks to the shale plays of the Lower 48.

The same shale plays turned the U.S. into the world’s biggest oil and gas producer.

And now a shale oil grade is joining the Brent crude benchmark.

It’s not for nothing; they called it a shale revolution.

It looks like someone got annoyed about all this for some reason.

A few senators said earlier this month want to reinstate the export ban.

Some people really don’t want us to have nice things.

Things like energy security.

Much less profits from oil sales…

A rock of stability in a stormy sea

That’s what the oil and gas industry has become.

Despite the…

• intensifying vilification

• all the climate lawsuits

• and the push to track and record emissions…

The industry keeps going.

If anyone needed hard evidence of the critical nature of this industry, there you have it.

Transition or no transition, demand for oil is rising.

“Keep it in the ground” is not an option.

“Keep pumping it out of the ground” is how reality looks.

Around the Global Patch

🇳🇴 OPEC+ bans mainstream journalists from meeting.
🇦🇷 Argentina's Vaca Muerta aims for 1MMbpd output by 2030.
🇬🇧 UK activist takes on Government in court over approved coal mine.

Tweet of the Day

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