The oil and gas industry owes Denmark a standing ovation. Danish voters on June 2 set the forced march toward European unity onto a new course. By a thin majority, they rejected the so-called Maastricht Treaty, a comprehensive plan to meld European monetary and political affairs.
In its essentials, European unity represents no particular threat to the industry. Indeed, by removing trade barriers and otherwise opening borders, economic unity would promote energy commerce and efficiency in the long run. The Maastricht Treaty, however, propounded something more. As Danish voters recognized, monetary and political union represents a centralization of power, or at least a shift of powers now implicit in the German central bank and North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Danes suspect they ought to have greater say in the process.
It is for this assertion of democratic will--not necessarily the inconvenience it has imposed upon European politics, although the irony deserves attention--that the industry should stand and applaud.
WHO RUNS THINGS?
The question remains: Does European unity apply only to markets or to money and governance as well? To judge from the Danish vote and official reactions to it, European governments have one answer to the question, Europeans quite another. This raises a second question: Who runs things in Europe? When questions Eke that go too long without answers, revolutions happen. At the very least, the uncertainty is terrible for business.
Until Denmark nixed the Maastricht Treaty, the second question's answer had begun to take disturbing shape. Increasingly, the European Commission, governing body of the European Community, was running things. It had a central cause, unity with which to bury dissent, as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher learned the hard way, And, as unassailable causes are wont to do, it produced ugly offspring.
The carbon tax for instance. With little more than a glance at the issue's rickety science, the EC has promoted the tax as a way for nations to join hands to halt global warming. The issue fuses two unassailable causes--international unity and saving the planet. Who dares to argue? Last week EC representatives were hawking their levy at the riotous Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, shaming nations that harbor contrary thoughts about taxing burnt hydrocarbons.
The oil industry would suffer commercially if a carbon tax took effect, of course. To different degrees, oil and gas markets would shrink. The tax would hurt economic growth overall and, thus, demand for fuel.
A LARGER ISSUE
But there's a larger issue for the oil industry, and not just companies but employees and customers as well. Can the world in which the industry conducts business be said to have progressed when an unelected bureaucracy assumes the power to suspend scientific discourse, promote international taxes, and consolidate military and monetary authority on the basis of nothing more than a fashionable ideal? It's a serious question for an institutionally unfashionable industry.
The Danes have the answer: no. The world has not progressed when international bureaucracies and forums, however fashionable, presume to govern. Denmark's voters have reminded the world that people govern. Ultimately, sensible voters elsewhere will deliver similar messages when asked to make unwarranted personal sacrifice to Earth Summit high-mindedness, Oil companies should support such retreats to reason. If they succeed, people might save the planet after all.
Copyright 1992 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.
