Big Oil Is in Trouble. Its Plan: Flood Africa With Plastic.

[Zorro]

Faced with plunging profits and a climate crisis that threatens fossil fuels, the industry is demanding a trade deal that weakens Kenya’s rules on plastics and on imports of American trash.

Confronting a climate crisis that threatens the fossil fuel industry, oil companies are racing to make more plastic. But they face two problems: Many markets are already awash with plastic, and few countries are willing to be dumping grounds for the world’s plastic waste.

The industry thinks it has found a solution to both problems in Africa.

According to documents reviewed by The New York Times, an industry group representing the world’s largest chemical makers and fossil fuel companies is lobbying to influence United States trade negotiations with Kenya, one of Africa’s biggest economies, to reverse its strict limits on plastics — including a tough plastic-bag ban. It is also pressing for Kenya to continue importing foreign plastic garbage, a practice it has pledged to limit.

Plastics makers are looking well beyond Kenya’s borders. “We anticipate that Kenya could serve in the future as a hub for supplying U.S.-made chemicals and plastics to other markets in Africa through this trade agreement,” Ed Brzytwa, the director of international trade for the American Chemistry Council, wrote in an April 28 letter to the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

The United States and Kenya are in the midst of trade negotiations and the Kenyan president, Uhuru Kenyatta, has made clear he is eager to strike a deal. But the behind-the-scenes lobbying by the petroleum companies has spread concern among environmental groups in Kenya and beyond that have been working to reduce both plastic use and waste.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/climate/oil-kenya-africa-plastics-trade.html

[Celerity]

1. K & R for visibility

[Xolodno]

2. Never saw a thread on this, but....

Exxon Mobil was kicked out of the Dow Jones recently.

Oil is on a down slope...its not going to die today, tomorrow, five years from now, twenty years from now, etc. But its demand is waning. Its profit margin is going down. All the other oil companies started to invest in alternatives, Exxon Mobile instead, doubled down with a lackluster investment into........algae.