Thursday, December 29, 2011

Big Oil Heads Back Home

Energy companies are shifting their focus away from the Middle East and toward the West—with profound implications for the companies, global politics and consumers
Big Oil is redrawing the energy map.

For decades, its main stomping grounds were in the developing world—exotic locales like the Persian Gulf and the desert sands of North Africa, the Niger Delta and the Caspian Sea. But in recent years, that geographical focus has undergone a radical change. Western energy giants are increasingly hunting for supplies in rich, developed countries—a shift that could have profound implications for the industry, global politics and consumers.


Driving the change is the boom in unconventionals—the tough kinds of hydrocarbons like shale gas and oil sands that were once considered too difficult and expensive to extract and are now being exploited on an unprecedented scale from Australia to Canada.

The U.S. is at the forefront of the unconventionals revolution. By 2020, shale sources will make up about a third of total U.S. oil and gas production, according to PFC Energy, a Washington-based consultancy. By that time, the U.S. will be the top global oil and gas producer, surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia, PFC predicts.

That could have far-reaching ramifications for the politics of oil, potentially shifting power away from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries toward the Western hemisphere. With more crude being produced in North America, there's less likelihood of Middle Eastern politics causing supply shocks that drive up gasoline prices. Consumers could also benefit from lower electricity prices, as power plants switch from coal to cheap and plentiful natural gas.

Production at the Bakken Shale in North Dakota could double over the next five years. But until new pipelines are built to handle the surge, companies are increasingly relying on rail to get the oil to market. WSJ's Mark Peters reports.

And the change is reshaping the oil companies themselves, as they reallocate their vast resources to new areas and new kinds of fuel. Working in the rich world—with its more predictable taxes and investor-friendly policies—removes some of the risks about the big oil companies that worry investors, making them less vulnerable to the resource nationalism of petrostates like Russia and Venezuela.

"A company like Exxon Mobil can eliminate the technological risk" of developing unconventionals, says Amy Myers Jaffe, senior energy adviser at Rice University's Baker Institute. "But it can't eliminate the risk of a Vladimir Putin or a Hugo Chavez."

This new way of looking at risk is at the heart of the transformation. International oil companies traditionally face a choice: They can either invest in oil that is easy to produce but located in politically volatile countries. Or they can seek opportunities in stable countries where the oil is hard to extract, requiring complex and expensive production techniques.

Bloomberg News (2); AFP/Getty Images (2)

Now, in a sense, the choice has been made for them. Big onshore fields in the world's most prolific hydrocarbon provinces are increasingly the preserve of national oil companies, state-owned behemoths like Saudi Aramco and Russia's OAO Rosneft and OAO Gazprom. For foreign majors like Royal Dutch Shell PLC and BP PLC, their former heartlands in the Gulf sands are now largely off-limits.

Shut out of the Middle East, they have responded with a huge push into new areas, both geographic and technological. Over the past few decades, they have built vast plants to produce liquefied natural gas, or LNG. They have drilled for oil in ever-deeper waters, ever farther offshore. They have worked out how to squeeze oil from the tar sands of Alberta. And they have deployed technologies like hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and horizontal drilling to produce gas from shale rock.

Wood Mackenzie, an oil consultancy in Edinburgh, says that more than half of the international oil companies' long-term capital investments are now going into these four "resource themes"—a huge shift, considering how marginal the companies once considered them.

There are also drawbacks to the new focus on nontraditional kinds of hydrocarbons. Environmentalists strongly oppose shale-gas extraction due to fears that fracking may contaminate water supplies, the oil-sands industry because it is energy-intensive and dirty, and deep-water drilling because of the risk of oil spills like last year's Gulf of Mexico disaster.

There are financial considerations, too. While conventional assets are relatively easy to develop and historically have offered good returns, projects in some more technically difficult sectors—like deep-water and LNG—typically take longer to bring on-stream, and are higher cost, meaning returns are lower.

But there is an upside for the majors. "The silver lining is the shape of the profile of these projects, which is different than conventional ones," says Simon Flowers, head of corporate analysis at Wood Mackenzie. LNG ventures, for example, can deliver contract levels of gas at a steady rate over 20 years. "So the returns may be lower, but overall you have a more dependable cash-flow stream," he says.

By pursuing these nontraditional fuels, the oil companies are committing themselves ever more deeply to the wealthy nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Wood Mackenzie says $1.7 trillion of future value for all the world's oil companies—52% of the total—is in North America, Europe and Australia. The consultancy has identified a "significant westward shift" in oil-industry investment, away from traditional areas like North Africa and the Middle East "towards the Brazilian offshore, deepwater oil in the Gulf of Mexico and West Africa and unconventional oil and gas in North America." And then there's Australia, far out east, "which is in the early stages of a spectacular growth phase."


Consider Shell. Seven years ago, the oil giant, synonymous with turbulent hot spots like Nigeria, decided to shift resources to more-developed nations that offered a friendly environment for investors and predictable tax regimes. Shell used to split spending on the upstream—the basic business of exploring for and producing oil and gas—roughly 50/50 between nations in the OECD and those outside of it. It's now 70/30 in favor of the OECD, with the bulk going to Canada, Australia and the U.S.

"The risks in OECD are technical, but they're easier to manage than political risk," says Simon Henry, Shell's chief financial officer. "In the OECD, you have more control of your operations."

With the new turf comes a new focus: Shell will soon be producing more natural gas than oil. That might have scared investors a decade or two ago. But with gas demand set to grow strongly, especially in Asia, the future for gas-focused companies is looking increasingly rosy—especially after the Fukushima disaster, which prompted a rethinking of nuclear power in Japan and elsewhere.



Entrenching Its Position

Like Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp. is entrenching its position in the Americas, home to just over half its resource base. Its unconventional resources have grown by almost 90% over the past five years to 35 billion oil-equivalent barrels—partly thanks to its 2010 acquisition of XTO Energy, a big shale-gas player. Exxon's U.S. unconventional production alone is expected to double over the next decade.

Some giants are looking further afield. Chevron Corp.'s three focus areas—the parts of the world that account for the bulk of its exploration budget—are the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, offshore West Africa and the waters off western Australia.

In particular, the company has staked out a huge position in Australian natural gas; its Gorgon LNG project in Australia is one of the world's largest. The push is based on expectations of surging demand for the fuel in Asia, largely in China, which wants to improve air quality in its heavily polluted cities by switching from coal to gas in power generation and running more commercial vehicles and buses on natural gas.

It "wasn't a conscious decision" to move into the OECD, says Jay Pryor, head of business development at Chevron. The company doesn't decide what projects to pursue based on where they are in the world, but on the quality of the resource, the commercial terms and the geopolitical risk. "The best rocks with the best terms are going to get the quickest investment," he says. Money has flowed into the U.S. and Australia because they offer the best incentives to oil companies, he says.

In recent years, Chevron has also expanded into another promising part of the OECD—Europe, which some estimates suggest has shale-gas reserves comparable to those in the U.S. Chevron has picked up millions of acres of land in Poland and Romania, where it will soon be drilling for shale gas. That's part of a wider trend: Dozens of companies are now exporting to Europe technologies used to open up shale deposits in the U.S.

Holding Back

Not all oil companies have piled into unconventionals the way Shell and Chevron have. BP, for one, has far fewer investments in tar sands and shale gas than its peers, though it has an unrivaled position in deep-water oil. That means it has less of a presence in the OECD than Shell: Its biggest projects are in poorer countries like Angola, Azerbaijan and Russia, and in recent years it has won a string of licenses and contracts in India, Iraq, Egypt and Jordan.

Yet even BP has been bolstering its position in the OECD. It said recently it was pressing ahead with a £4.5 billion ($7 billion) investment in the North Sea's Clair oil field, part of a five-year, £10 billion program.

Still, being in the OECD doesn't guarantee oil companies an easy ride. Operators in the North Sea were shocked earlier this year when the U.K. government suddenly increased taxes on oil producers. In France, authorities recently banned hydraulic fracturing. And in the U.S., the drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico, imposed after the Deepwater Horizon blowout, threw many of the majors' plans into disarray.

But still, for the most part, the risks are much greater in the non-OECD. "The majors went to Venezuela and lost their property," says Ms. Myers Jaffe of the Baker Institute. "They went to Russia and had to whisk their CEO off to a safe house. They went to the Caspian and realized they couldn't get the oil out. I for one would much rather invest in a company that had 70% of its spending in the OECD."

Mr. Chazan is a staff reporter in The Wall Street Journal's London bureau. He can be reached at guy.chazan@wsj.com.

Monday, December 5, 2011

李遥: 佛朗哥和犹太人

作者:李遥 

 
假如没有佛朗哥1936年的起义,假如佛朗哥在内战中败给人民阵线,西班牙无疑会落入斯大林之手,成为苏联的保护国,它肯定要参与二战帮助苏联打希特勒德国,并成为二战后组成的社会主义阵营的第一个小兄弟国,一个无产阶级专政的社会主义国家。

所幸,这些都是假设,佛朗哥赢得了内战,击溃了斯大林在西班牙建立共产制度的战略计划;佛朗哥争取到希特勒的援助而不被其利用,避免了把国家卷入二战灾难而又没得罪希特勒。西班牙国家虽小,政治和地理的战略位置却很重要,在国际国内错综复杂瞬息万变的形势下,佛朗哥运用军事才干和政治智慧,成就了一个大赢家。

但是,佛朗哥不是无产阶级革命家,他完全不懂左派那套宣传或者个人崇拜,所以他的功绩没人著书立说,于是原本就以造谣为生的西班牙左派更有了可乘之机,与国际左派遥相呼应,给佛朗哥戴上了一系列罪名和恶名,其中尤以“法西斯”为最,似乎由于战略上与希特勒有染,于是也就成了希特勒那样的法西斯。

恐怕很多人都不知道的是,二战期间,当希特勒纳粹疯狂迫害犹太人的时候,佛朗哥却默默地营救了六万犹太人。

1940年6月18日,德军打垮法军,逼近西班牙边境。成千上万在法国的犹太人开始带着行囊向南逃离,很快就在亨达亚和布港市的关口排成长队。从那一刻起,西班牙当局授权准许所有的犹太人过境,甚至没有身份证,或是随同犹太人团体的人,都被准许入境,没有一个人被退回法国或转交给纳粹。根据英国史学家马丁-吉尔伯特(Martin Gilbert)的统计,从那里获救的犹太人有至少三万。

那段时期,马德里有家“使馆茶厅”,是一个策划营救方案的中心,负责人是法国的玛格丽特-泰勒女士(Margarita Taylor),另有一个英国大使馆的海军武官阿兰-希尔加特(Alan Hillgarth)配合,这个援救网由代号“M16”的英国情报部人员领导。其间最活跃的,是在英国大使馆工作的西班牙医生爱德华多-马丁内斯-阿隆索夫妇(Eduardo Martínez Alonso)。此外,密切参与配合的还有西班牙银行家胡安-马奇(Juan Mrch),西班牙驻柏林使馆外交官何塞-路易斯-桑塔艾亚(José Ruiz Santaella)。

1940年,纳粹刚占领法国,巴黎的西班牙大使馆门前每天都拥挤着大批急于逃难的犹太人,他们中的多数要过境西班牙到葡萄牙,以便乘船离开欧洲。正常情况下,签证要很多道手续,还要等一个星期以上的时间,这对命在旦夕的犹太人是太长了。使馆一秘爱德华多-普罗佩尔-德-加耶洪(Eduardo Propper deCallejón)为了帮助更多的犹太人脱离危险,向大使请示扩大权限,大使说由他全权决定。于是,他开始自作主张为数千犹太人签证入境西班牙,并得到葡萄牙领事阿里斯提德斯-德-索萨-门德斯(Arístides de Sousa Mendes)的配合,救助了至少一千五百犹太人。西班牙驻法总领事贝纳尔多-罗兰德-德-米尤塔(Bernardo Rolland de Miota),也是在良知驱使下,使出浑身解数救助了所有他能够救助的犹太人(约三千人)免于落入奥斯维辛集中营。


【布达佩斯被逮捕的犹太妇女】

1941年9月,西班牙新任驻布达佩斯大使罗哈斯-莫雷诺(Jose de Rojas),到任即被那恐怖气氛所攫获,他不断对侵犯人权提出抗议。当年9月,他向马德里要求授权发放签证无须等候马德里审批,外交部答复,同意给罗马尼亚的西班牙籍犹太人签证。1942年,纳粹对犹太人的迫害加剧,佛朗哥政府授权西班牙在欧洲纳粹占领国的外交使节,向犹太人增发签证。

形势复杂而危险,这些西班牙外交官本身也面临生命危险,所以,西班牙外交部对救助犹太人采取“被动和容忍”的基本原则 ,是可以理解的。

1943年1月28日,德国政府通知西班牙外交部,限西班牙政府在3月31日前撤走德国占领区的西班牙国籍的犹太人,这些人目前享受特殊待遇,但是过期后就会纳入和其他犹太人的同等对待。两星期后,德国再次威胁西班牙政府:包括居住在波兰、巴尔干国家的西班牙国籍的犹太人也在消灭之列。并于2月22日再次催促。

西班牙外长回答:是否可以把他们送回来源国,如希腊和土耳其,同时表示西班牙政府同意为到葡萄牙和美国的犹太人提供过境签证。但德方答复是不可能,或者返回西班牙,或者对其实行现行政策。西班牙外长回答,表示对这种性质的最后通牒尚无可奉告。

西班牙外交部政策部总长杜辛纳格(José Dussinague)认为,这些犹太人在西班牙比在其他国家更加危险,因为,美英等国的特工会立即抓住这些人来作为反对轴心国、尤其是反对德国的宣传。杜辛纳格起初没有表示出西班牙政府对此事有多大兴趣。但是,几天后佛朗哥政府转而松口表示同意。据德国大使3月17日的文件透露:“秘密!西班牙外交部政策局总长杜辛纳格3月15日口头通知我:西班牙政府改变态度,倾向于允许在德国占领区的西班牙籍犹太公民入境,人数仅限100名。”

这一行动十分复杂而且敏感,尤其是当世界各国都拒绝对犹太人提供帮助的情况下,营救行动必须十分谨慎。假如西班牙对德国的要求回应过度,会在盟国面前产生佛朗哥政权与德国合作的印象,假如不理睬,关系到大批犹太人的生死存亡。

然而,事实上,营救继续在暗中进行。1943年底,西班牙外交部命令其驻外各领事馆,为西班牙犹太族裔的赛法尔迪(Sefardí)人颁发护照或国际证明。1944年春,佛朗哥政府再发命令,规定对所有寻求西班牙保护的犹太人,只要接受以赛法尔迪犹太族的名义申请一律给予保护,并在证件上做上记号,方便将来非赛法尔迪族人必要时注销。结果这项政策不仅营救了真正的赛法尔迪犹太人,也营救了大量不能肯定是赛法尔迪的犹太人。在柏林、布达佩斯、哥本哈根、巴黎、马赛等许多地区,营救的人数在五万以上。


【逃生的签证】

就是这些政策和命令,使得西班牙驻布达佩斯使馆外交官安赫尔-萨恩斯-布利兹(Angel Sanz Briz)得以放手行动,展开救援。费德里科-伊萨特(Federico Ysart)在他的《西班牙和犹太人》一书中,记载了萨恩斯-布利兹怎样搞到必要的证件救出数千犹太人。他利用200个签证名额,把一个名额用于一个家庭,并如此重复操作,使更多的人得到签证。他还租了一栋房子为数千犹太人提供了避难地,并以外交居所为由拒绝纳粹接近。他一共救助了5200名犹太人(其中只有200人是真正的赛法尔迪人),以色列政府表彰其英雄行为授予“民族正义”的称号,1994年匈牙利追补授予其匈牙利共和国功绩十字勋章。


【西班牙驻匈牙利领事安赫尔-萨恩斯-布利兹】

1944年,西班牙外交部长何塞-菲利克斯-雷克利卡(José Félix Lequerica)向驻华盛顿的西班牙大使通报了西班牙在保护犹太人方面的成果。这份1944年11月16日签发的文件指出,萨恩斯-布利兹在匈牙利的成果是“在我方的持久的命令下”取得的。

由于前面陈述的原因,营救工作是秘密进行的,正如恩里克-迪格利奥(Enrico Deaglio)在他的《善的平凡》一书中写道:“尽管佛朗哥的西班牙在营救犹太人的行动中几乎是完全默默无闻的,但是绝对比那些反希特勒的民主力量更为高尚。获救的人数在三万到六万。”“由于是秘密行动,准确数字难以统计。但佛朗哥是营救犹太人数量最多的执政者。佛朗哥允许犹太人入境避难,从未退回哪怕一个犹太人。”

假如知道佛朗哥营救犹太人的一点背景,就会发现这位佛氏大将军的大度和慈悲。

内战期间,全世界的犹太人都支持人民阵线而反对佛朗哥的国民派,美国的大量媒体都偏向人民阵线,而犹太人在这些媒体中占据很活跃的地位,包括好莱坞的众多名人,匈牙利著名战地摄影记者罗伯特-卡帕(Robert Capa),纽约时报记者赫伯特-马修斯(Herbert Matthews),记者和作家路易-费切尔(Louis Fischer),作家马尔达-格尔霍恩(Marta Gelhorn,后来的海明威夫人),作家亚瑟-科斯特尔(Arthur Koestler)等等,都是犹太人,他们都替共产左派义愤填膺而谴责佛朗哥。尤其是英国到西班牙的战地记者,他们不提供消息,反而替人民阵线作宣传。

不仅如此,国际纵队中有大量的犹太人,例如美国共产党的林肯纵队和共产主义波兰纵队,他们中的绝大部分都是犹太裔,虽然许多人登记的姓氏并不显示是犹太人。总之,国际纵队的大约60%都是犹太人。照一般逻辑来说,犹太人的表现不值得令佛朗哥对他们产生很多好感,但他还是营救了数万犹太人。


【帮助人民阵线打佛朗哥的美国共产党的林肯大队】

佛朗哥和希特勒有着本质的区别。首先,佛朗哥是一个深信不疑的天主教徒,而希特勒是无神论者,他对佛朗哥有宗教信仰十分恼火。第二,希特勒是种族主义者,而佛朗哥无论其本人还是他的体制完全没有种族主义。第三,法西斯是社会主义的专有财产,希特勒坦承“马克思是他唯一的老师”,自诩“是马克思主义的唯一践行者”,而佛朗哥是坚决的反马克思主义者,他要让西班牙成为“没有马克思主义也没有共产主义搞破坏的国家”。所以,说佛朗哥是法西斯,只能是出于政治目的的诽谤。佛朗哥体制不是极权,至多是威权主义的专断。难道赢得内战的佛朗哥应该把政权还给斯大林派,让他们把西班牙再次陷入红色恐怖?可见,采取独裁统治在当时是唯一可取的统治方式。所以,虽说身为独裁统治者,但是佛朗哥有人道的胸怀,善于区分普通犹太思想和犹太共产主义思想,他反对纳粹式的迫害,所以决定营救那些绝望中的人们。

以色列政府和世界犹太人组织对佛朗哥和西班牙表示了高度赞赏和崇敬。例如:“犹太人民和以色列政府牢记西班牙政府在希特勒时代所采取的人道主义态度,西班牙向众多受纳粹迫害的人们提供了帮助和保护。”——1959年2月10日果尔达-梅厄(Golda Meir)夫人在国会的讲话。

“佛朗哥政府虽然是希特勒的盟友,但是他不赞成对犹太人实行的暴力迫害。西班牙为无数在二战中逃离纳粹地狱的犹太家庭提供了庇护。西班牙做得甚至更多,马德里授权东欧和中欧的西班牙领事馆,向犹太人发放护照,使他们历史性地带上了西班牙的姓氏,例如托雷达诺、贝哈拉诺、卡斯特罗,等等,这使得成千上万的犹太人获救,尤其是在罗马尼亚,当时那里的犹太人正在被押送到希特勒的死亡营地。”—— 以色列两个最主要的情报机构的主任、伊塞尔-哈雷尔(Isser Harel)1989年对西班牙《国家报》的声明。

伊塞尔-哈雷尔还说:“从1957到1961年,佛朗哥的西班牙为25000名犹太人提供了谨慎、持久和毫无私利考虑的帮助,这些犹太人在西班牙短暂停留后移居以色列。没有西班牙的战术配合,这段史诗是不可能的。”

“以色列无力改变罗斯福在二战中对犹太人的态度。欧洲唯一真正向犹太人伸出援助之手的国家,是一个在那里毫无犹太影响的国家——西班牙,他营救的犹太人超过所有民主国家营救的总和。这一切都十分复杂。”——施罗默-本-阿米(Shlomo Ben Ami),以色列外交部长和首任驻西班牙大使,1991年会见西班牙《时代》周刊。

“佛朗哥的西班牙为犹太人提供了重要的藏身地,他们逃出自由、平等和博爱的法国,冒险来到西班牙。我不想为佛朗哥辩护,但是二战中无数犹太人在西班牙获救,假如忽略了这个事实就是忽略了历史。”—— 犹太人世界大会主席伊斯莱尔-辛格(Israel Singer) 2005年会见西班牙《世界报》。

《佛朗哥,西班牙,犹太人和大屠杀》的作者,拉宾诺-利普海茨(Rabino Lipschitz)1970年在新闻周刊上声明:“我有证据表明西班牙国家元首弗朗西斯科-佛朗哥在二战时期营救了六万以上的犹太人。该是人们向他致谢的时候了。”


【青年佛朗哥】

西班牙作家拉法埃尔-基隆-曼特洛(Rafael Girón Mantero)写道:“我本人在英国的时候认识许多犹太人,不止一个人对我提起他们的朋友或家人有过这样的被营救的经历。”

西班牙学者何塞-安东尼奥-布鲁(José Antonio Bru)撰文披露:佛朗哥去世时,美国赛法尔迪联合会机关报刊发文章,追忆说:“1940年10月佛朗哥在亨达亚会见不可一世的希特勒时,‘拒绝了希特勒提出的所有要求,包括立法实行反犹太政策。’从1945年,佛朗哥准许犹太机构在西班牙领土协助纳粹集中营的幸存者移居巴勒斯坦,而英国就是从那时起禁止犹太人移民。”

赞同佛朗哥的史学家认为,佛朗哥不仅不是排犹者,而且在犹太人被迫害时期伸出援救之手。而反对佛朗哥的作家说,佛朗哥大概是排犹主义者,只是和纳粹有相当距离。后者的态度似是而非,表明他们面对事实缺乏诚实和勇气,他们不过是从宗派立场出发,为维护自己的既定观点不惜无视直至歪曲事实,这是左派的本性,不足为怪。

据西班牙学者塞萨尔-维达尔(Cesar Vidal):“假如从宗教信仰的角度出发,天主教徒佛朗哥大概是倾向于反犹太主义,因为天主教认为犹太人‘背信弃义’。但假使如此,佛朗哥的反犹太也会是出于宗教而不是种族。……佛朗哥毫无种族主义,是一个宗教信仰深厚的人,他是从天主教道德的高度出发救助犹太人的。”

由此可见,佛朗哥体制没有种族理论,他不是犹太族的同情者,也不是排犹者。不过,佛朗哥在西班牙国内对人民阵线的战俘实行了大幅减刑和成批释放的政策,但是对人民阵线被关在纳粹集中营里的人没有过营救的表示和行动,这也是事实。


【《西班牙,佛朗哥和犹太人》封面】

犹太人始终铭记佛朗哥的恩德,恰如恩里克-迪格利奥书中所说的:“弗朗西斯科-佛朗哥的名字用金字刻在《生命之书》上。每年11月20日,在美国的犹太教堂里都颂‘悼亡经’来纪念这位使大批犹太人免于被屠杀的恩人。”