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

• Transition Agenda Gives Legacy Oil New Lease of Li …

• Judge Gives Go-Ahead to Exxon Anti-Activist Lawsui …

• Tweet of the Day

Transition Agenda Gives Legacy Oil New Lease of Life

IRA funds for the energy transition are breathing new life into legacy oil fields.

It’s a beautiful irony wrapped in carbon capture funding.

And the industry is taking the opportunity.

Meet Kinder Morgan, the oil producer

Kinder Morgan recently bought oil assets in West Texas.

The pipeline operator paid some $100 million for them.

And now it has big plans.

Those include capturing carbon dioxide and injecting it into old wells to boost production…

… and getting paid to do that from the IRA funds.

 In fairness, Kinder Morgan has maintained a small production business over the years.

It produces some 50,000 bpd.

Now, this is set to grow with the West Texas acquisition.

There may be more to come, too, not just for Kinder Morgan.

The inclusion of carbon capture in the IRA scheme was a huge mistake—from a green perspective, that is.

From an oil industry perspective, it’s a massive opportunity.

And the industry is taking it.

Reduce, reuse, recycle

Using carbon dioxide as a production enhancer is nothing new.

And it makes the oil industry quite sustainable if you think about it.

It reuses its own emissions to boost new oil and gas production.

This is literal recycling. Resource conservation, if you will.

Yet more proof that, if anything, the transition offensive is making oil and gas stronger.

Judge Gives Go-Ahead to Exxon Anti-Activist Lawsuit

A Texas District Judge has allowed Exxon’s lawsuit against an activist investor to proceed.

Exxon can go ahead and sue the pants off Arjuna Capital.

After the firm demanded that Exxon start reporting Scope 3 emissions.

A small win in a long war

Arjuna Capital teamed up with Dutch activist investors Follow This to pressure Exxon.

This time, however, Exxon struck back with a lawsuit.

It said the two activists’ proposal would harm shareholder returns—which it certainly would.

So it sued.

The activists immediately pulled their proposal out, but it made no difference.

Exxon was out for blood.

Follow This was excluded from the judge’s ruling because it’s based in the Netherlands.

But Arjuna Capital is fair game.

And it seems even Calpers, the activist investor defender, can’t save it.

Maybe because with its 0.19% in Exxon, it can’t really vote out the CEO and the board.

Which is what the pension fund is threatening.

To punish the Exxon leadership for daring to sue activists.

Double standards in all their glory

"This is an unwarranted and cynical attack on shareholder rights in the world’s leading capital market."

That’s the comment of the founder of Follow This.

Of course. Everyone knows that only activists can sue whomever they want and however much they want.

But is Big Oil responding to attacks? Perish the thought.

Big Oil, by the way, shares the blame for this double standard.

It didn’t respond to activist attacks for years.

Now, this is starting to change.

And that’s a good thing.

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