Two of the world’s richest men visited Alberta’s oil sands earlier this week, leading to speculation that one or both of them was going to invest is this dirty, polluting fuel.
Warren Buffett, widely regarded as the world’s richest man and Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, who is hardly short of a bob or two, toured Canadian Natural Resources Horizon oil sands project near Fort McMurray, Alberta.
The men were given details on the Canadian oil industry by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. “We were asked to come up and do a short presentation,” said Greg Stringham, vice-president of markets and fiscal policy at the association.
Just the fact that the two had toured the region made the shares of two major oil sands players jump. Suncor Inc, Canada’s oldest oil sands company, gained C$3.62 to close at C$59.89, a jump of 6.4 percent. Canadian Natural Resources rose C$6.13 to C$88.40, a gain of 7.5 percent.
Buffett and Gates also took a helicopter tour of the region. Hopefully the scarred and polluted landscape somehow put the men off investing in this growing environmental catastrophe. They should also read the next post by Oil Change’s Kenny Bruno…
Hopefully the scarred and polluted landscape somehow put the men off investing in this growing environmental catastrophe.
When it comes to making “serious money” it’s always a case of rape now; pay a pittance of conscience money later.
Step one makes you a misanthrope, in the broader, more literal sense of the word. And in everlasting consequence.
Step two makes you a “philanthropist”, in the antagonymic sense of the word. And in one’s own mind, which dies along with one’s body.
Like pedophiles, the robber-barons “can’t help themselves”.
Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are some of the biggest philanthropists of all time, with Buffett giving 85% of his 44 $billion to charities, most of it to the Gates foundation, until recently funded entirely out of the Gates fortune (in the $10’s of billions of dollars). Frankly, if they’re touring the Alberta Tar Sands, there’s more going on than meets the eye.
They are not impervious to social concerns, not by any means. I doubt greed is their dominating factor for visiting the sands. If investment were their interest, though, I think the two would be receptive to public concerns about the Tar Sands.
-Noah