This week ExxonMobil announced some promotions, including its elevation of Dan Ammann to President of ExxonMobil Upstream Company:
Ammann joined ExxonMobil in 2022 as president, Low Carbon Solutions to grow the company’s Low Carbon Solutions business and focus on delivering profitable, large-scale emissions-reduction solutions for key industries. He had previously been chief executive officer of Cruise, which is majority-owned by General Motors (GM), in 2018 and was appointed president of GM in 2014.
There are two problems we see here.
One, Ammann comes from the sector of Exxon’s operations that thinks “low carbon (dioxide, aka ‘plant life’)” is a moneymaker. However, it’s not, unless you get taxpayers to massively subsidize things like Exxon’s “carbon (dioxide) capture and storage” boondoggle, the justification for which Chairman and CEO Darren Woods (pictured above) has supported the inflationary Inflation Reduction Act, while also wanting President-elect Trump to keep the United States in the Paris Climate Agreement:
Woods told CNBC on Tuesday that Exxon’s investments in technologies to lower emissions depend on federal tax credits that were established or expanded under the IRA. He warned that the company’s investments in these technologies would change if the incentives are weakened or repealed. “There needs to be an incentive to reward those investments and generate a return,” Woods said. “If we find that those incentives dissipate or go away entirely, then that would definitely change our investment plans.”
So Ammann’s job at Exxon the last few years has been built upon his ability to ingratiate himself with politicians, based upon climate alarmism schemes — aka “wealth redistribution.” Left to a free market, carbon [dioxide] “solutions” largely fail.
Secondly, Ammann came to Exxon’s gimmicky enterprise from General Motors, where his last job was as head of its autonomous driving corporate stepchild Cruise. Chair and CEO Mary Barra fired him from that position. He was credited as one of those who fed Barra’s fantasies about the viability of electric vehicles:
The former Morgan Stanley investment banker has also become one of the leading proponents of ending the age of the personal automobile, making him perhaps the most radical and forward-looking executive on Barra’s team.
His view, as he has written, should be to “move beyond the car to the transportation system that we deserve — one that is safer, more affordable, and better for us, for our cities, and for our planet.”
Cruise has been a source of multiple headaches for GM including collisions, injuries, interference with emergency response vehicles, and other problems.
So again, these consistent failures stoked by government dependency, rather than consumer demand, for some reason warranted a promotion of Ammann by Woods and ExxonMobil.
Another example of rewarded failure is the presence of former Boeing chairman Larry Kellner on Exxon’s board of directors, leading its committee in charge of safety. Kellner left the airplane manufacturer’s board in shame earlier this year after a series of safety incidents, including a door plug blowing off an Alaska Airlines flight in mid-air.
What kind of placements in key positions can we expect next from the top dogs at Exxon? Colin Kaepernick in charge of DEI? John Malkovich overseeing offshore drilling?
We can’t wait to see what’s next.
