Big Oil prospers on our struggles

Published 2:27 am Thursday, August 7, 2008

By Staff
While Exxon Mobil reported the most profitable quarter ever for any business, I celebrated the fact that a gallon of gas had slipped below $4 at my local gas station.
As they looked for sacks to put their $11.7 billion in, I searched through my couch cushions for spare change to top off my tank.
I'm sure, however, that Exxon Mobil executives feel my pain and plan on spending most of their windfall profits on finding ways to lower prices at the pump.
I'm also pretty sure they're devoting a portion to developing alternative fuels, creating more efficient engines and building houses for magical fairies.
Realistically, if oil companies make more money when barrels of oil cost more, they have no incentive to help bring down that cost or help us find ways to use less oil.
It's absurd for us to assume that these companies care about anything beyond how many more billions they can pocket while regular folks make decisions like should I fill up my car with gas or buy groceries?
There's something incredibly perverse about profiting off the misery of others.
I'm all in favor of making money and no company should apologize for doing so, but most businesses have some investment in maintaining a relationship with their customers, even if only to avoid losing that customer to the competition.
Even companies who disdain their customers and have very weak competitors (my cable company comes to mind) must make some effort at retaining clients because if pushed hard enough everyone has a breaking point.
Oil companies, however, have no real competition as our government has made it absurdly easy for them to consolidate, eliminating any real options the public had.
Not only has our government done nothing to lower oil prices, they actually do things that keep them high.
Congress has made oil industry consolidation easier than getting a pizza delivered and President George W. Bush has shown there are few places he won't invade for his pals in Big Oil.
The worst failures, however, have to be our two laughably incompetent presidential candidates.
Though oil prices may very well be the most important issue facing most Americans, neither Barack Obama nor John McCain has anything useful to say on the issue.
McCain's big idea involves a gas tax holiday. A holiday more like Arbor Day than Christmas, the gas tax holiday involves suspending federal gas taxes for a few months while hoping that oil companies and gas stations pass those savings onto consumers.
But, while McCain's program seems merely ineffective, Obama's seems downright dangerous. The naive, inexperienced Democrat wants a windfall profit tax on oil companies to fund $1,000 fuel rebates to struggling Americans (read that anyone poor enough to vote for a Democrat).
Obama also wants to maintain most of the bans on drilling for new oil in this country, guaranteeing that even if oil companies didn't simply add the new tax to their prices, nothing would change in the long term.
Neither candidate has articulated a clear vision to end America's dependence on foreign oil.
Instead of calling for increased drilling, more nuclear power and offering incentives to develop technologies like hydrogen fuel cells, we get party line rhetoric and gimmicks.
If I ran an oil company now I'd be sitting on the porch of my big house smoking a cigar, adjusting my top hat and monocle while laughing at the incompetence and corruption that made me so rich.
Sadly, since I'm not an oil company billionaire, all I can do is weep a little at the lack of vision and dearth of real ideas that has brought us $4 gasoline and an ongoing energy crisis.