Exxon vs. Obama—The biggest oil company in the world is also the most resistant to…green energy.

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.portfolio.com/business-news/portfolio/2009/03/18/Exxon-vs-the-Obama-Administration

Exxon vs. Obama

by Peter Waldman April 2009 Issue

The biggest oil company in the world is also the most resistant to the shift to green energy. The White House seems determined to make Exxon Mobil’s life miserable.

One afternoon earlier this year, Rex ­Tillerson, the chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil Corp., and Barack Obama, then president-elect, laid out very different visions of America’s energy future. With the days counting down to his inauguration, Obama told a crowd at George Mason University of his plan to double U.S. production of renewable energy by 2012—“to finally spark the creation of a clean-energy economy,” he said, to screams from the students in the audience. That pledge was a small part of a broad alternative-energy push that has swept into the White House along with Obama.

Nearby, at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Tillerson, a lanky Texan with a thick drawl and slicked-back silver hair, celebrated the earth’s “continued abundance” of oil, noting that humans have consumed barely a third of the planet’s available petroleum reserves. Oil and natural gas, he said, in a story line that Exxon Mobil has perfected over decades, will continue to supply nearly 60 percent of the world’s energy needs for the next 20 years. “Let’s be realistic,” Tillerson scoffed, when asked about Obama’s green-energy visions. “Let’s don’t fool ourselves!”

For years, critics have skewered Exxon Mobil for funding skeptics of global warming, claiming that its corporate denial campaign has endangered the planet. The world’s largest private energy corporation now must confront a different sort of climate change—the one in Washington. The question: Can Exxon Mobil survive Barack Obama?

The new president decries not just America’s dependence on “foreign” oil—the battle cry of politicians everywhere—but America’s dependence on oil, period. And he believes Exxon Mobil in particular, and Big Oil in general, is a key part of the problem. “I want to be clear,” Obama said shortly after taking office. “We have made our choice: America will not be held hostage to dwindling resources, hostile regimes, and a warming planet. We will not be put off from action because action is hard. Now is the time to make the tough choices.”

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[HelenWheels]

1. Valdez

Isn't Exxon the company that had the big oil spill off the shores of Alaska. They had their penalty reduced to a laughable level and there are still law suits they are fighting over that.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. Yeah, I know a guy who was involved in the "clean-up"

Let's just say it wasn't pretty.