06-26-07 by dugan
OilWatchdog’s home in California is a continent away from Albany, NY, but this editorial in the Albany Times Union shows the credibility of oil companies is in the tank from coast to coast. It’s a very sharp piece of fact-based writing, skewering oil companies’ yearly change of tune about what causes price spikes:
For years, they have blamed environmentalists for blocking their attempts to build new ones.
But
now the companies are changing their tune, and finding a new scapegoat.
According to a New York Times article reprinted last Monday in this
newspaper, the companies are no longer seeking to build new refineries
because of the growing emphasis on alternative fuels.Peter Robertson, vice chairman of Chevron Corp., put it this way to
the Times: "Why would I invest in a refinery when you’re trying to make
20 percent of the gasoline supply ethanol?" He was referring to plans
under review by Congress to mandate annual ethanol production of 15
billion gallons a year by 2015, and 36 billion gallons by 2022.But
that wasn’t what oil company executives were saying a little more than
18 months ago, when Red Cavaney, president of the American Petroleum
Institute, supported House Republican leaders who had called for added
refinery capacity. "We’re going to keep increasing capacity on the
refineries," he said. Back then, capacity was tight, and one minor
disruption at a single refinery could affect prices nationwide. That’s
still the case today.
Advocates like OilWatchdog knock down one "reason," and they just invent another. Oil companies’ high-paid PR operations are like the old Joe Palooka dolls: knock ’em over and they pop back up. It’d be laughable if their lies didn’t cost the rest of so much.