Proactive Investors AustraliaExxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM), the world’s biggest energy company which has operations in Nigeria and Liberia, fluctuated between gains and losses after saying some of its oil and gas activities in West Africa have been disrupted by the Ebola outbreak, including plans to drill offshore Liberia, the country worst affected by the spread of the disease.
Shares were up 0.4 percent at $93.70 at 2:30 p.m. in New York.
“We had some drilling plans for some blocks offshore West Africa in Liberia,” the company’s chief executive officer, Rex Tillerson, told a news conference yesterday. “We are having to look at when it would be prudent to resume operations there because you do have to have shore-based support.”
The virus has killed at least 3,338 people in West Africa in the worst such outbreak on record. Earlier this week, the first person was diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, in Dallas, Texas.
Rex held the news conference to announce $18 million in grants to three Houston, Texas, hospitals.
He said the company is prohibiting some employees from traveling to the countries directly affected by the disease, and is taking precautionary measures related to workers’ families.
He characterized ExxonMobil’s response to the Ebola threat as “fairly low level.”
The virus has hit hardest in Liberia, but also struck Sierra Leone and Guinea, and affected Senegal and Nigeria.
Liberia officials said they will prosecute the man who brought Ebola to the United States for lying on a health form, the Associated Press reported.
Passengers leaving Liberia are being screened for fever and asked if they have had contact with anyone infected. U.S. Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan arrived in the United States on Sept. 20 and answered “no” to those questions, a questionnaire obtained by The Associated Press showed.
Neighbors told the wire service that Duncan had helped a sick pregnant woman who later died of the disease. Her illness at the time was believed to be pregnancy-related.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Friden confirmed Thursday that Duncan did not have any signs of a fever when he was screened at the airport, and did not feel any symptoms until four days after arriving in the United States.
Duncan, a Liberian national, only began showing symptoms of the disease after he arrived in the United States.
Meanwhile, the United Nations warned that Ebola could become airborne and mutate, in a report from The Telegraph.
Anthony Banbury, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative on the disease, said in the article that the longer the Ebola virus exists, the more likely it could mutate and spread via the air, causing an unlikely but possible “nightmare scenario.”
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I guess this is why our troops are really going to West Africa, to protect
Big Oil’s interests. Abuse of the military.