------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the May 31, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- DELIGHTED WITH ENERGY GIVEAWAYS: OIL LOBBYISTS SHOWER BUSH WITH MILLIONS By Deirdre Griswold Is there a real energy crisis? The Bush administration has unveiled a broad energy program that would weaken environmental rules on air pollution, allow big business to drill for oil on ecologically fragile public lands, and revitalize the nuclear power industry. All this, it says, must be done because of critical energy shortages. Just announcing a plan like this is a public relations move to prepare the public for higher prices and lower environmental standards. It was greeted with unconcealed delight by the gas and oil industry, which is already enjoying a banner profit year. As a token of their appreciation, corporate lobbyists for the industry feted Bush May 22 at a black-tie fund-raising dinner in Washington that netted $23.9 million for the Republican Party. Among the dinner's sponsors were Red Cavaney, president of the American Petroleum Institute; Richard Shelby, executive vice president of the American Gas Association; Bud Albright, lobbyist for Reliant Energy; and Robert S. Aiken, vice president for federal affairs of Pinnacle West, which owns a major electrical utility in Arizona. Other industries were there, too, of course. Bush has many friends in the corporate world who are cheering his legislation that lowers their taxes by a trillion dollars over the next 10 years. And there was Philip Morris, which pledged to raise $250,000 for the dinner. The tobacco giant appears encouraged by reports that the government may drop a $100-billion racketeering lawsuit against the industry. Of course, the fact that this Bush administration is as dependent on the oil and gas industry as Bush senior's does not prove there is no energy crisis. But it has caused many even in the capitalist media to debate the premises behind the administration's energy plan, written by a task force headed by Vice President Richard Cheney. It is not difficult to find articles in the capitalist press questioning the crisis. They point out that while motorists and truckers may face higher prices at the pump this summer, gasoline prices in constant dollars are actually lower today than in the 1980s. Those who were lured into buying gas-guzzling vehicles when gasoline prices were exceptionally low may have a hard time, especially if they are also hit by the economic slowdown-- but they should blame the absence of fuel economy standards. Of course, there is a crisis in most of California involving the delivery of electricity--but it is widely understood that this crisis has nothing to do with overall shortages. It is a direct result of deregulation, and has been accompanied by fabulous profits for power companies even as the utilities that buy their power are facing bankruptcy. Often the same interests control the power companies and the utilities. Where there has been no deregulation of the power industry-- in Los Angeles, for example--there have been no power reductions, no skyrocketing prices, no crisis. But if the energy companies want a crisis, there will be one. That's the lesson of the last 30 years. There are many decisions they can make that will lead to shortages down the line--and shortages can then be parlayed into higher prices and higher profits. We can expect that more and more people will be affected by utility shutoffs, power outages and reductions, super-high fuel prices and possibly long lines at the pumps. OIL MEANS MONOPOLY Of all the industries in this country, oil has been the most monopolized, beginning with the rise of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Co. After this monopoly was supposedly broken up in 1911, the dividing of markets and collusion over pricing and supplies continued among its heirs. By the end of World War II, the entire world's oil supply was in the tight grip of a handful of imperialist companies, most of them in the U.S. They became known as the Seven Sisters: British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell and five U.S. corporations. The five were Exxon (Standard Oil of New Jersey), Chevron (Standard Oil of California), Mobil, Gulf and Texaco. The tendency to further monopoly has today reduced the five to three: ExxonMobil (merged in 1999), Chevron (merged with Gulf in 1984), and Texaco. Texaco absorbed Getty, one of the so-called independents, in 1984. Conoco, now the fourth-largest U.S. oil company, was taken over by the DuPonts. Other important players are Occidental and Phillips. Whether part of that original cartel or considered independent, the big oil and gas companies are raking in the money. ExxonMobil recently announced that its first-quarter earnings had increased by 51 percent. Conoco's earnings rose 58 percent in the same period. Occidental Petroleum's profits tripled last year, based largely on higher prices. Even as the industry cries shortages, Wall Street analysts say that energy stocks are "buzzing." Enron is the world's largest corporation handling the distribution of energy. It has built natural gas pipelines from central Asia to South America. Its chair, Kenneth Lay, was a member of the team advising Sen. Spencer Abraham before he became Bush's Energy Secretary. Enron is one of the power wholesalers that together raked in $6.2 billion this year selling natural gas to California utilities at prices far above normal. NEITHER PARTY WILL FIGHT THE POWER BARONS These are the companies that now treat the natural energy resources of the United States and much of the world as their own personal property. What are the working people to do about this wholesale theft of what should belong to everyone? How can the political and economic power of these modern-day pirates be broken? Some see the open connection of the Bushes to the energy corporations as reason to focus on getting the Democrats back in. But that is a dead end. The energy monopolies have thrived for over a hundred years, under both Democrats and Republi cans. The two big "energy crises" of recent times-- in 1973-74 and again in 1979--took place under Republican Richard Nixon and Democrat Jimmy Carter. Both times the capitalist government would not or could not impede the aggressive campaign of the energy companies to raise prices and dismantle government controls. The main deterrent was the enraged mass response to price hikes. In 1974 and again in 1979, independent truckers barricaded roads and bridges and fought the state police in protest. Price increases in 1974 heightened mass anger at the Vietnam War; the people knew that the Pentagon was sending millions of gallons of fuel a day to Vietnam for its ships, planes and land vehicles. Fuel price protests hastened Nixon's downfall. Even before this current "crisis" really gets underway, an anti-corporate movement is growing among the young. The question that is sure to be discussed and debated by broader and broader circles is, what is to be done? How can there be sufficient energy for the people without environmental destruction? How can people's needs be met without the plunder of the Third World, without wars of aggression in the Middle East and elsewhere, without irreversible global warming? The only answer is to take control of these rich resources away from the profit-hungry corporations. Only then can human considerations drive an energy plan. But who will take over? The government that is nothing but stooges of the giant corporations? Would Bush and Co., or any other capitalist party administration, be anything except administrators for the billionaires? Here we think it highly appropriate to quote at some length from an article by Sam Marcy that appeared in this newspaper on June 29, 1979. Written a few months after the Three-Mile Island disaster forced big business to pull back from their plans to expand nuclear power, the article took up the question "What to do about the gas/oil crisis," which was wracking the country at the time. WHAT KIND OF A TAKEOVER? Marcy wrote: "To seriously deal with the crisis it is necessary to think in terms of a take over of the oil companies.... The idea of a takeover immediately brings to mind the general conception of a nationalization by the government. In both European and U.S. history, nationalization has turned out to be not a true takeover by the people but a change of ownership from the oil companies to the capitalist government. ... "It is necessary to present the question of a takeover of the oil industry in an entirely new way, based upon a set of wholly new circumstances in which the [U.S.] working class finds itself. The idea of taking over the oil industry from the monopolies would find favor with the majority of the working class and the oppressed people. ... "[However] under the circumstances of contemporary [U.S.] capitalist politics, there is probably as great a distrust of the capitalist politicians as there is of the oil companies. "The question is how to implement an approach for a takeover of the oil industry which would not necessarily be a transfer from the oil monopolies to the capitalist government, for the latter would merely administer the oil industry and deposit the profits in the form of compensation into the same coffers as before. ... "The first stage is to arouse widespread public sentiment, especially among the workers, on the need to divest the oil companies of the ownership of the oil industry and turn it over to the public, to declare it public property. ... "The second part deals with the creation of popular committees from the masses who can employ whatever technicians and managerial staffs are necessary to run the industry. ... "Too much detail for such a plan is of no practical use. Such details are easily developed once mass enthusiasm develops for the plan, once the creative initiative of the people asserts itself and proves its capabilities in contrast to the soulless governmental bureaucracy which shuns all interventions by the masses. "What is needed at the start is to frame a resolution, printed and circulated in the millions, in the form of a petition by the people which asks that Congress intervene in the present crisis and that the form of its intervention should be the swift and speedy enactment of a law which divests the oil companies of all ownership and invests it in the people of the United States. ... "Whether it is practical or not depends on whether the masses can be aroused to its necessity." Arousing the mass of workers to understand that the energy companies are not omnipotent, that the people have every right and ability to intervene against shutoffs, power outages and soaring prices is the first step. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
