The hopeful tones sounded at American Petroleum Institute's annual meeting in New York ring true. What's lacking is volume.
Oil industry executives at the meeting warned against assumptions of the worst about the administration of President-elect Bill Clinton. Realities of the office and times, they said, will moderate Clinton's worst tendencies toward government activism. Besides, they might have added, what would a confrontational stance accomplish?
REASONS TO WORRY
Clinton knows what API leaders assert: that voters in the election just past were not seeking a return to spendthrift, redistributive government. He has consistently depicted himself as a new breed of Democratic moderate. He knows that his reelection prospects depend on economic growth. And, yes, pressures of a straining economy will hold in check whatever liberal tendencies might linger behind that suave grin. The industry nevertheless has reasons to worry-reasons beyond the person or philosophy of the new President.
The country and the industry have been here before. They have seen hyperactive government skirt the discipline of economic pressure. It happened in the Bush administration. Concern about federal debts and deficits moderated spending and helped President Bush amass an enviable veto record. So instead of enacting massive spending programs the government made business implement an activist political agenda-and pay the costs. The approach exploited an unsavory American conviction that money spent by business doesn't cost real people anything. In fact, it has cost thousands of real Americans their jobs.
An unanswered question is whether Clinton appreciates the extent to which frustration over the employment byproduct of this process contributed to his new place in history. The oil industry can help provide the answer by broadening its political message. To be sure, its investment shift abroad and layoffs of U.S. workers result in great measure from its unique problems with government. But the oil industry has other problems common to other industries that are laying off workers, too. A growing web of regulations and liabilities adds to the costs and risks of employing Americans. And it is happening as businesses try to improve productivity and remain competitive.
The oil industry should seek ways to join business in general in questioning government intrusions of all types. It should ask whether Clinton's health care initiatives will amount to universal insurance funded by business-which would surely result in shrinking business and vanishing health care. And it should involve others in issues it has traditionally fought solo. For example, reducing U.S. oil consumption by some arbitrary figure, part of Clinton's campaign energy platform, would raise costs of anyone forced to use second best fuels. How many nonoil businesses understand the threat?
INCREASING ACTIVISM
Economic and political constraints notwithstanding, government activism will increase with Clinton in the White House and Democrats in charge of Congress. To think otherwise would be wishful.
Industry thus will face a host of issues in the next 4 years. But it must speak with diminishing volume because it has fewer issues managers and lobbyists than it had, say, at the start of the Bush administration. API itself cut staff by 25% this year. That ought to tell the industry something about prosperity under government that always wishes charitable though its intentions be-to do too much. And it should make the broad lesson part of whatever message it carries into the Clinton years.
Copyright 1992 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.
