Whether you’re in favor of drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge or you think all cars should run on corn, the one thing we all seem to agree on is the need for energy independence. Unless you’re the president of Shell Oil, who thinks “energy independence is going too far.” Sunday’s Meet The Press gave the heads of three major oil companies yet another chance to try to coax the public into not hating them, and John Hofmeister of Shell provided an interesting bit of devil’s advocacy:
I think energy independence is the wrong direction because the U.S. is not an island nation. We are interdependent on all of our global companies doing business all over the world, and I think the oil companies need to be interdependent as well. And I think that really is good for international relations.
It’s good for us to be dependent on fussy, volatile, rogue nations with questionable human rights records and violent mood swings because America doesn’t have any friends. We need someone to play with on the playground. Otherwise the teacher is going to call our parents into the office, and next thing you know we’ll end up in L.D. with all the nice-but-slow countries we like to pick on (like Smelly Canada…)
So, next time you wince at the gas pump, instead of thinking about oil barons sipping cocktails on the deck of a yacht and gently rocking in a sea of hundred dollar bills, think of the multicultural spectrum of smiley children’s faces in the Disneyland ride “It’s A Small World.” Sure, there might be a smiley freckled beheading or a preemptive war with “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride,” but that’s just the price of using the happiest fuel on earth!
Shell says energy security, not independence, should be U.S. focus (Marketwatch)