Big Oil: In the US Congress you only get what you pay for

“I have about as much faith that the US Congress will do the ‘right thing’ as I do that oil industry management will do the ‘right thing’. ZIP. ZERO. NONE. There is too much oil industry money floating around the halls of Congress.”

Comment by former employee of Shell Oil USA on the LA Times article…

BP spill may cause sea change for energy industry

There a lot of us oil industry ‘worker bees’ who have a thing or two to say about the industry. Most of us find the work in the oil industry, particularly the upstream side of the industry, fascinating, challenging, and extremely rewarding, and would not change careers if we had the chance. There isn’t another profession like it in the world.

But most of us also find the way the industry is managed to be dismally poor and outright abhorring and disgusting at times. Your blog provides a much needed outlet.

The US oil industry has several serious problems here in the States.

However, the most serious may be the fact that they don’t have a political representative at the highest levels of government to make their case and co-opt their regulatory adversaries.

During the Reagan years G.H.W. Bush senior was V.P., and as an ex-oil industry manager he wielded a great deal of influence, at the White House and with Congress, that the oil industry benefited from. When Bush Sr. was President oil companies had a very easy time of it. Clinton’s administration was not overly friendly to the oil industry, but they weren’t overtly hostile either. Of course, with G.W. Bush junior in the White House, and Dick Cheney, former CEO of Halliburton as VP, the oil industry was in the drivers seat.

Don’t think that the war in Iraq wasn’t about oil and political payback to the oil industry for all their support. Iraq has potentially some of the largest on-shore reserves of ‘easy oil’ left to discover. Estimates run as high as perhaps 300-500 billion bbls. That makes oil industry CEO’s drool all over themselves. Of course, Halliburton has made a FORTUNE on that war.

Now, there is nobody in the White House that is beholding to ‘big oil’. And the BP disaster, and revelations of corruption and collusion at DOI and MMS, have only added to the oil industry’s problem.

The real problem the US oil industry has it that it tries to operate in this country like it does in third world countries, i.e., by co-opting the political leadership and demanding special tax treatment, royalty ‘holidays’, and non-enforcement or lax enforcement of environmental and worker safety laws as the ‘quid pro quo‘ for political financial support. They have tried to corrupt the political process here in the US with their vast monetary resources like they have done in most of the rest of the world. And to a good degree they have succeeded. In the US Congress you only get what you pay for.

Now the political winds in Washington have changed somewhat and it is time to pay the piper, maybe, to a degree. The oil industry lobby is working overtime to stop unfriendly legislation and ‘costly’ and ‘unnecessary job killing’ regulation. Time will tell how successful they are.

I have about as much faith that the US Congress will do the ‘right thing’ as I do that oil industry management will do the ‘right thing’. ZIP. ZERO. NONE. There is too much oil industry money floating around the halls of Congress.

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