Oil Executives: Really Doing A Lot on Global Warming — Just Don’t Ask for Details

Representative Ed Markey (D-MA), as Chair of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, called for this week’s hearing on “Drilling for Answers on Oil and Gas Prices, Profits, and Alternatives,” to question the chief executives of the major oil and gas companies on gas prices and other topics. Some things we learned:

• When asked by Markey how much ExxonMobil invested in researching renewable energy last year, Senior VP J.S. Simon mentioned $100 million for Stanford to study the subject. ExxonMobil’s profits last year — $40 billion.
• The total profits from the five major oil companies in 2007 was $123 billion, and they still got an $18 billion tax subsidy from the U.S. taxpayer. The House of Representatives has twice passed bills to revoke these subsidies but they have gotten in the Senate. The panel warned the Committee of the dangers of “raising taxes” on an industry that helps drive the economy and employs so many people.
• Jay Inslee (D-WA) asked the witnesses if they or anyone in their companies participated in Vice-president Cheney’s secret Energy Task Force meetings, they all said “No” except Robert Malone, Chairman and President of BP America who said he did. Inslee asked for, and Malone agreed to provide any documents he has regarding those meetings. Weren’t from the Administration that these meetings even took place? When the Committee gets those documents, that should be interesting.
• Under questioning from Inslee, ExxonMobil’s Simon stated that there are other ways, other than research funds into clean energy, to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, such as making the use of oil more efficient. Then Inslee asked how these alternatives would be discovered — invoking the premise that maybe the “oil fairy” would provide them.
• Inslee also read the conclusions from a study out of Stanford that reported the U.S. could replace all on-road vehicles with battery electric vehicles powered by 71,000 to 122,000 Five-Megawatt wind turbines (less than the 300,000 airplanes built in WWII) and by using these vehicles could reduce U.S. CO2 emissions by 25.5%.
• When asking Simon whether this is where a greater portion of their profits should go rather than ExxonMobil’s current “pathetically small research budget”, Simon argued that ExxonMobil is doing a lot, that Inslee would be impressed to learn about their “Global Climate and Energy Project,” and said that he thought Inslee would find it “quite significant.” The problem: Inslee mentioned that the Committee actually did ask ExxonMobil to provide information on the investments they were making in this area, and they refused to give it.

When asked to justify their record-breaking profits, an array of explanations were given, from “We have to have big profits in good times to overcome the losses in bad times” to “The profits are not that much bigger on a percentage per dollar basis than other industries.” When asked as to whether or not they could just lower prices in these hard economic times, there was some silence until Shell Oil’s President, John Hofmeister, explained that prices were set at the localities depending on supply and demand and local conditions.

So what did we learn today? It isn’t their fault they are making record profits with record oil prices — it is just the way the economy is operating right now. And as to the future? Well they are making big big investments into research and studies as to how we can mitigate greenhouse gasses and alternative energy sources — just don’t ask them for the details.

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