Hearing of the House Select Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee
Statement
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REP. EMANUEL CLEAVER (D-MO): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Sensenbrenner, thank you for this meeting.
I think all of you are already hearing what's going on at home. We've been on a break -- it's actually been a work break for most of us -- and one of the things that we hear over and over again is, "What are you guys going to do about the high price of gasoline?"
And I spoke with a woman about a week ago who earns $18,000 a year and can't afford to fill up her tank to get to work. Kansas City, Missouri, does not have mass transit, we only have busses, and so she's about to lose her job because she can't afford to get to it, and so she's losing all the way around.
And with the skyrocketing price of a barrel of oil and people paying more than $3 a gallon in Missouri, the anger level is rising significantly, and my concern is that we not have a dialogue today about, you know, whose fault it is. I think I came here prepared to hear everyone say, "It's not our fault." But I think it is the fault of people in this room, and I think something can be done.
The perception is terrible. It is -- I mean, people talk about the perception of Congress and, you know, our approval ratings; your approval ratings are lower than ours, and that means you are down low, and I think you probably have the lowest approval ratings in the nation. So I'm hoping that before this session is over, you can raise your approval rating by giving some real answers.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back the balance of my time.
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REP. CLEAVER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm going to try to ask short questions and so I can get short answers in my time. My father worked all of his life -- he never earned more than $25,000 a year -- and there were years that he worked, actually worked three jobs, most of the time just two, and sent four children to college. He's 86 years old. There will be people like my father all over the country, and I'll have some of them at a meeting next Saturday when I do my monthly coffee with the congressman.
Mr. Simon, what can I say to them to help them understand how Lee Raymond received a $400 million severance package from ExxonMobil, which translates into $141,000 a day? What do I say next Saturday to the people who come to my meeting who are struggling to get to work now because they can't afford to put gasoline in their car? Can you help me get them to understand how it's okay for Mr. Raymond to get a $400 million package and they struggle and the oil company profits are at an all-time high?
MR. SIMON: Well, I would hope that would be behind us by now, Congressman, but I would just --
REP. CLEAVER: Why?
MR. SIMON: As we've said before --
REP. CLEAVER: Why?
MR. SIMON: Because that is in the past, it hasn't been here recently, but what I --
REP. CLEAVER: Well, the gas -- we can only talk about gas prices from yesterday. I mean, everything we talk about here is in the past.
MR. SIMON: Well, I agree, but yesterday is a lot different than, let's say, when that occurred. But I believe as we testified before, when you break down that I think there is a misconception of how much of that was due to past, how much it was to do with the future, and how much it was due to current earnings there. And I think it was blown out of proportion.
REP. CLEAVER: So you think I should tell people in my district and probably all over the country that $400 million package was blown out of proportion?
MR. SIMON: I think when you look at it, Congressman, and you break it down and you look at that pay package relative to others that were doing the same kind of jobs, you would consider it was competitive. And it was done by outside directors, it was not management involved in that at all, and they look at others to make sure we're competitive.
REP. CLEAVER: This is a rhetorical question. What ever happened to shame?
Since we're having difficulty providing access that I think all of you agree that we need, are any of you right now going back to oil wells that were tapped out or deemed to be somewhat unprofitable when oil was sold at a far less price? I mean, are any of you unplugging or upgrading old wells?
MR. PETERSON: Well, we're certainly going back to facilities that, you know, maybe oil fields that are producing and looking at the opportunity to put more technology into those oil fields and more ways to extract more from those wells. So an example in the San Joaquin Valley in California, where we have a big field -- that field has now been producing for 100 years. It's likely to get up to -- originally, we probably thought we'd be able to recover 10 or 20 percent of the oil that's in that field. Today we're looking at ways to get up to 80 percent. So more technology -- higher prices obviously lead to the opportunity to put more money and more technology into existing fields and can make them last a lot longer and make them increase the production -- so, in that sense, yes.
REP. CLEAVER: We could get the impression that the oil industry is struggling. I mean, if you listen -- you don't think it's struggling?
MR. HOFMEISTER: I think we struggle for access, Congressman. We struggle for access in which we can have appropriate investments that are making the return on that investment worthwhile. In other words, we're looking for the ample reserves. We could spend an awful lot more money with very low return if we were looking in the old fields in which a lot of that oil has already been extracted. I agree with my colleague that there were -- there are wonderful technical opportunities to get more from existing fields, but until the nation has a means by which we could use, for example, CO2 for enhanced oil recovery in the large quantities that would be necessary, many of these old fields will not have the ability to produce a lot more oil.
REP. CLEAVER: All your companies are doing well, right?
MR. ROBERTSON: Well, we're working darn hard. I mean, we've got a big challenge to meet. We've got the world, and including this country, that needs a lot of energy, and we're spending and putting more human energy into these investments, into these projects, than we ever have before. So life is not easy.
REP. CLEAVER: Well, your stock ended yesterday at ($)85.13. I think Exxon was ($)85.45 closed out yesterday. That doesn't sound much like a struggle.
MR. ROBERTSON: I didn't say it was a struggle. I said we were working hard to try and solve a problem that exists.
REP. CLEAVER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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