The interlude between presidencies, twilight of the 110th Congress, is the time to practice diplomacy, the time to praise cooperation, the time to voice hope for bipartisan policy-making. But the US oil and gas industry must not delude itself. From the Democratic presidency of Barack Obama and strongly Democratic 111th Congress, it faces an historic fight.
Any doubt that this is so should have vanished when Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) deposed John Dingell of Michigan as chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Dingell has never been a fan of the oil and gas business. But he would listen to its positions on issues and sometimes compromise. Nothing in Waxman’s background indicates that the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, representing ultraliberal Beverly Hills, will be that hospitable. He’ll more likely be downright combative in service to House leadership that has shown abysmal knowledge about energy and even less willingness to learn.
Troublesome Senate
The Senate is no less troublesome. No one should forget the Senate Judiciary Committee’s pointlessly theatrical grilling of oil industry executives over oil prices and profits last May, a shameful spectacle that reprised a similar farce staged by a joint committee in November 2005. The Senate will have a stronger Democratic majority next year. An unpopular industry has nothing to lose–and great public service to perform–by defending itself vigorously against certain antagonism.
The industry must resolve to be ruthlessly honest about energy. This won’t be easy. The American public has been tricked into believing the unbelievable. It thinks renewable energy and conservation can make it energy-independent. It believes that lapses of technology and political will are all that stand in the way of this high ambition.
The public needs to know the truth. It needs to understand that renewable energy and conservation are essential to US energy health but hardly the whole remedy. It also needs to understand that energy independence is unachievable. Until these realities inform discussion, constructive energy policy will continue to elude the US.
While asserting realism in the national energy discussion, the industry should frame its policy arguments within the interests of consumers. Energy mistakes hurt consumers, who also are taxpayers.
Here, the industry has reason for optimism. Congress allowed moratoriums on federal offshore leasing to expire in September after voters expressed support for drilling. Painfully high oil prices highlighted the need for increased supply, and Americans apparently came to see the link between supply and drilling. This is an important breakthrough. The industry should develop the insight, never forgetting that it originates in the interests of people rightly resistant to excessive energy cost.
A related strategy is to counter the antioil prejudice that underlies US policy-making. For environmental extremists, rejection of hydrocarbon energy is a deliberate goal. For others concerned about energy, it’s an unconscious yearning attached to futile hopes for energy independence and supply somehow free of cost and environmental consequence.
The countervailing reality is that oil, gas, and coal will dominate energy markets as long as buyers care about cost. Hard facts about form–the physics of accessibility and usability–make this so. Americans will either learn the lesson now and respond or make economic sacrifice to politically driven energy fantasies--and still, in the end, rely on economically dominant oil, gas, and coal. Oil and gas companies need to press the choice.
Confused climate
These messages will not be easy to deliver in a political climate as radically confused as that of the present. Yet the oil and gas industry must do so clearly, consistently, and emphatically–directly to the public as well as to politicians.
Because the public doesn’t want to hear the message, the messenger won’t be popular. But the oil and gas industry will never be popular. The fight ahead goes beyond popularity to legitimacy and the license to do business. An industry confronted with those stakes must never miss a chance to show to a hostile government and wary public unyielding commitment to–and willingness to fight for–its indispensable work.