Once again, Senators summoned the heads of America’s biggest energy companies to Capitol Hill to ask them substantive questions about grill them in front of the cameras for publicity about rising oil and gas prices:
WASHINGTON — Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee vented their fury over high gasoline prices at executives of the nation’s five largest oil companies on Wednesday, grilling the oilmen over their multimillion-dollar pay packages and warning them that Congress was intent on taking action that could include a new tax on so-called windfall profits.
Such showdowns between lawmakers and oil titans have become a familiar routine on Capitol Hill. But with gas prices nearing $4 a gallon, and lawmakers headed home for a weeklong Memorial Day recess where they expect to get an earful from angry constituents, there is added urgency for Congress to appear active.
Of course, as usually happens at these hearings, nothing was really accomplished because while the oil executives talked about the importance of removing government restrictions to increased exploration for oil:
Oil executives today challenged lawmakers to open more areas to drilling and send a signal to the world about the United States’ resolve to deal with its own energy problems.
“If the nation set a goal of increasing domestic production by 2 (million) to 3 million barrels a day by opening up new sources of exploration and production, we could demonstrate to the world that we are in control of our own destiny,” Shell Oil Co. President John Hofmeister told a Senate panel today.
Granting greater accesss, Hofmeister argued, coupled with Congress’ previous actions to increase use of renewable fuels and to raise fuel mileage requirements, could help avoid awkward scenarios in which U.S. leaders ask producing nations to produce more and get “an unresponsive reply.”
Just last week, President Bush was unsuccessful in persuading Saudi Arabia to crank up its oil output significantly.
Chevron Vice Chairman Peter Robertson argued that the United States can’t expect other countries to increase their production “when we limit our development without good reason.”
Hofmeister blamed high energy prices on market conditions, as well as producing nations’ efforts to serve their own national interests.
“As repetitive and uninteresting as it may sound, the fundamental laws of supply and demand are at work,” Hofmeister told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Oil exporting nations are managing their natural resource development and production to supply their local and global markets in their own interest.”
While Senators concentrated on how much money the executives were paid last year:
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, demanded that the executives tell him the amount of their pay packages and then ridiculed those who said they did not know exactly how much they earned.
“I wish I made enough money that I didn’t even have to know how much I make,” Mr. Leahy told John E. Lowe, the executive vice president of ConocoPhillips.
Two of the five executives — Mr. Hofmeister of Shell and Robert A. Malone, the chairman and president of BP America — noted that their pay was not a matter of public record because they were not among the five highest-paid employees at their companies. Still, they volunteered that they had earned in excess of $2 million last year.
What relevance the executive’s salary have to either the price of gas or the price of oil is something that the Democratic Senators never really felt the need to answer. Instead, they spent the day pontificating about stuff like this:
Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, derisively accused the executives of trying to portray themselves and their companies as victims.
“To me it was just a litany of complaints that you are all just hapless victims of a system, you blame one thing or another, which most people would say is just simply the cost of doing business,” Ms. Feinstein said. “Yet you rack up record profits, record profits, quarter after quarter after quarter, and apparently have no ethical compass about the price of gasoline.”
Diane, what part of they have no control over the price of gasoline don’t you understand ?
