Senate To Call ‘Big Oil’s Slippery Six’ Back To Testify About Their Price Gouging On Gas Prices

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Business Insider reports, Senate Dems want to haul in Big Oil CEOs to testify on price gouging. Joe Manchin likes the idea but doesn’t want Congress to be ‘beating people up’:

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday that oil and gas CEOs would soon be expected to testify before Congress with prices still high at the pump.

“The bewildering incongruity between falling oil prices and rising gas prices smacks of price gouging,” he said in a floor speech. “The Senate is going to get answers, and that’s why we will be calling on the CEOs of major oil companies to come testify before the Congress.”

Some support for the idea came from a senator who’s often sided with Republicans to tank elements of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda: “Vichy Democrat” Sen. Joe Manchin, a conservative West Virginia coal baron with close ties to the fossil fuel industry.

Manchin said he had “no problem bringing them in” to “explain basically how the process works.” He’s long leaned on the White House to cut red tape and accelerate domestic production of fossil fuels to soften the blow of rising prices.

“We’ll all understand a little bit better rather than just beating people up that we’re expecting to provide the energy we need,” he told Insider.

Note: Hillbilly coal baron “Mazaratti Manchin” recently killed the nomination of Fed nominee Sarah Bloom Raskin because of her views on climate change. Manchin says he can’t support Biden’s Fed nominee Sarah Bloom Raskin:

Sarah Bloom Raskin, President Biden’s nominee for the Federal Reserve’s vice chair of supervision,wanted financial regulators to better understand climate change-related risks to the financial system and possibly incentivize more spending away from fossil fuels.

Raskin had argued in the past that financial regulators should use their powers to try to constrain the flow of capital to the fossil fuel sector, attracting the ire of the oil and gas industries and their allies on Capitol Hill.

Hillbilly coal baron “Mazaratti Manchin” was having none of it.

Now more than ever, the United States must have policy leaders and economic experts who are focused on the most pressing issues facing the American people and our nation – specifically rising inflation and energy cost,” Manchin said in a statement.

“I have carefully reviewed Sarah Bloom Raskin’s qualifications and previous public statements. Her previous public statements have failed to satisfactorily address my concerns about the critical importance of financing an all-of-the-above energy policy to meet our nation’s critical energy needs,” he added.

Manchin is reminding his party — and his president — that he’s not done wielding his veto pen, per Axios’ Hans Nichols.

Nobody elected this prick president. He is a tool of the Carbon Monopoly.

“Mazaratti Manchin” is also opposed to Detroit’s conversion to an electric vehicle fleet. Manchin’s ludicrous attack on electric vehicles bodes badly for our future:

In comments that are now sinking in hard among Democrats, Manchin recently told an energy conference that he is “very reluctant” to see the development of electric vehicles, a key component of a rehabilitated Biden blueprint to combat climate change.

The problem here is that Manchin’s stance appears grounded in a deeply flawed conception of government and the economy that could undermine the very foundation of the case for acting on climate, and how we should do so.

This bodes very badly. It means we might squander an opening for the Russian invasion of Ukraine to build deeper public consensus for shifting away from fossil fuels. And it dims hopes for getting major new climate policy passed costing Democrats the House, possibly killing those prospects for many years.

“I’m very reluctant to go down the path of electric vehicles,” Manchin said at the conference. “I’m old enough to remember standing in line in 1974 trying to buy gas.” He added he doesn’t want to wait in line “for a battery for my vehicle, because we’re now dependent on a foreign supply chain.”

What’s galling is that Manchin recently signaled openness to a smaller Biden blueprint that would raise some high-end taxes and use the revenue for deficit reduction and investing in climate.

[L]et’s first note that it’s extraordinarily cynical for Manchin to evoke bad memories of 1970s gas lines to argue against electric vehicles. High oil and gas prices right now, in the context of the Russian invasion, make a strong case for reducing dependence on fossil fuels. Manchin’s demagoguery turns that on its head.

Beyond this, Manchin says transitioning to electric vehicles will put us at the mercy of China’s dominance in electric car batteries. And more vaguely, he suggests government shouldn’t encourage development of electric vehicles, because the good ol’ gas-guzzling automobile’s infrastructure didn’t benefit from government help. That was created by “the market.”

Parsing Manchin’s position is challenging. After all, the bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed last year — which Manchin championed — included billions in subsidies for electric vehicle charging stations. So Manchin doesn’t flatly oppose all government help for the development of such technologies.

But Manchin does appear to be saying that, in a broader sense, the electric car’s development shouldn’t benefit from too much government help, because the traditional auto did not.

[If] Manchin’s fear is Chinese dominance of battery supply chains, then government investment to encourage domestic production of such essentials for electric cars could mitigate that. Indeed, Democrats have pointed out that a resuscitated climate package would include exactly this.

Manchin’s deeper argument is also off-kilter. It posits the existence of some kind of immaculately government-free market in which the traditional auto and its infrastructure developed, in contrast with electric vehicles, which need government help to get off the ground.

But government investment has been the foundation of the development of technologies throughout U.S. history. As the great book “American Amnesia” recounts, much U.S. technological advancement in the 20th century “rested on public efforts to encourage and spread technological innovations through modern infrastructure.”

This includes the development of the automobile and its infrastructure, notes Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker, who co-wrote “American Amnesia.”

[H]ere’s the rub: Government should subsidize development of electric vehicles precisely because the “market” probably cannot achieve this on its own at the outset. Government can help markets achieve a social imperative — speeding our transition off fossil fuels — just as it has throughout our history.

But unfortunately, that underlying policy goal is what Manchin appears to oppose. Which bodes very badly indeed.

Business Insider continues:

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont said the hearing would probably take place under the Senate Budget Committee. He chairs the panel and held hearings over the past year on outsized corporate power, huge Wall Street profits, and income inequality.

“The price of oil has gone down recently, the price of gas continues to go up,” Sanders told Insider. “They make outrageous profits and the American people want to know why.”

Prices for oil and natural gas soared last year as the economy rebounded with demand not keeping up with supply. Climbing prices prompted firms like Exxon Mobil and Chevron to recently report their biggest profits in years, even before Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.

 

It’s prompted Democrats to ratchet up their criticism of oil companies with high gas prices squeezing Americans’ paychecks ahead of the November midterms. It was not immediately clear which oil executives would be called to testify before Congress.

Gas prices stood at $4.31 a gallon on Wednesday, per AAA, a two-cent drop from two days ago. By comparison, the price of crude oil dropped below $100 a barrel after it hit $140 last week in the wake of Russia’s invasion, the highest level since summer 2008.

President Joe Biden was highly critical on Wednesday, saying in a tweet that “oil and gas companies shouldn’t pad their profits at the expense of hardworking Americans.”

“The oil industry made about $200 billion in profits last year. If it’s profitable for them to increase production, they’ll do it. If it’s not they won’t,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts told Insider. “Their motivator is profits, profits, profits.”

Experts say price fluctuations with crude oil take longer to filter through to gas stations trying to make a profit. They tend to offload gas bought at higher prices first, creating a lag when consumers can expect to see lower crude oil prices reflected when they go refill their tank.

Last fall, Big Oil’s “Slippery Six” Testified before Congress. Oil Executives Were Grilled Over Industry’s Role in Climate Disinformation:

At a heated hearing on Thursday, Democrats had some big questions for the chief executives of Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP and Shell: Would they pledge to stop lobbying against efforts to reduce emissions? And were they willing to tell their powerful trade groups to stop working against electric vehicles?

None of the executives agreed.

Instead, the leaders of the four major oil and gas companies touted their support for a transition to clean energy and said they had never engaged in campaigns to mislead the public on the role of fossil fuel emissions in global warming. All four acknowledged that the burning of their products was driving climate change, but also told lawmakers that fossil fuels are not about to disappear.

“Oil and gas will continue to be necessary for the foreseeable future,” said Darren Woods, C.E.O. of Exxon Mobil. “We currently do not have the adequate alternative energy sources.”

Democrats responded with forceful language in the more than six-hour hearing. “Some of us actually have to live the future that you all are setting on fire for us,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York told the executives.

Democrats had hoped to recapture the drama of the tobacco hearings of the 1990s, where lawmakers put the C.E.O.s of cigarette companies on the hot seat and each executive told the country that smoking was not addictive. There was shouting, shaming, and one demonstration involving a jar of M&Ms to make the point that the companies were investing relatively little in renewables, about 1 percent of their total capital expenditure, according to the International Energy Agency.

But the executives — Mr. Woods of Exxon Mobil, Gretchen Watkins of Shell, Michael K. Wirth of Chevron and David Lawler of BP — seemed to have learned from the tobacco hearings as well, sticking to their scripts, emphasizing their concerns over global warming and citing their internal targets for cutting emissions.

The four executives, as well as Suzanne Clark from the United States Chamber of Commerce and Mike Sommers from the industry group American Petroleum Institute, appeared on video screens, not in person, out of concerns over the pandemic.

[T]he hearing marked the first time oil executives were pressed publicly to answer questions, under oath, about whether their companies misled the public about the reality of climate change by obscuring the scientific consensus: that the burning of fossil fuels is raising Earth’s temperature and sea levels with devastating consequences worldwide, including intensifying storms, worsening drought and deadlier wildfires.

It came as President Biden urged lawmakers to vote to approve a $1.85 trillion climate and social policy package.

[In] Thursday’s House hearing, some of the biggest moments centered on what the oil executives would not say.

In one exchange, Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York, chairwoman of the committee, asked all four if they would commit to no longer spending any money, either directly or indirectly, to oppose efforts to reduce emissions and address climate change.

“Will you take the pledge? Yes or no?” Rep. Maloney said.

In another, Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, asked the executives to tell the American Petroleum Institute and other trade groups, which the companies pay to represent their interests in Washington, to stop funding advertisements against electric vehicles and other climate policies.

“He’s sitting right next to you on the virtual screen,” Mr. Khanna said of API’s president, Mr. Sommers. “Tell them to knock it off.”

The executives didn’t commit to either of the requests.

“What I’ll commit to is continuing to be an active member of the API,” said Ms. Watkins of Shell.

API, an industry group which the four companies in Thursday’s House testimony are members of, spent almost half a million dollars to run ads opposing Democratic members of Congress. Those ads, which include ads that targeted individual members of Congress for their support of climate policies, were viewed at least 21 million times, according to Facebook data.

Mr. Woods, the C.E.O. of Exxon Mobil, faced questions about company statements over the years that cast doubt on whether fossil fuels were the main driver of climate change. He said the positions were “entirely consistent” with the scientific consensus of the time.

He also said that a 1997 statement by Lee Raymond, then Exxon’s chief executive, that “currently, the scientific evidence is inconclusive” about the role of human activity in warming was “consistent with the science.” Two years earlier, the United Nations’ top climate science body had reached a consensus that global warming is occurring, and that the burning of fossil fuels was a significant cause.

Mr. Woods also said that Exxon Mobil now recognizes climate change, yet “there are no easy answers,” to solving it.

Other executives agreed. Mr. Lawler said the fact that his company has a goal by 2050 of reaching “net zero” — meaning it would no longer pump any additional greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from its own operations — “doesn’t mean BP is getting out of the oil and gas business.” Mr. Wirth of Chevron said, “The undeniable reality is that oil and gas remain a part of the energy equation.”

[T]he catalyst for the House hearings was a sting operation earlier this year by the activist group Greenpeace. The group captured on video an Exxon lobbyist who said that the company had fought climate science through “shadow groups” and targeted influential senators in an effort to weaken President Biden’s climate proposals.

Mr. Woods said at the time that the comments “in no way represent the company’s position, and several of the senators later said that the lobbyist had exaggerated their relationship or that they had no dealings with him. Soon after, Mr. Khanna called for industry executives to testify before Congress.

Also at the hearing Ms. Maloney released a report by House committee staff showing that despite the fact that all four oil companies said they support the Paris agreement, a 2015 international accord that aims to keep global temperatures at relatively safe levels, few have lobbied to support it. The report found that the vast majority of companies’ lobbying efforts are directed at cutting taxes.

According to the study, the four oil companies and trade groups reported 4,597 instances of lobbying Congress since that agreement was inked. Of those only eight referenced lobbying on the Paris Agreement, and none cited lobbying on legislation to cut carbon emissions and promote the goals of the agreement.

Ms. Maloney said she intends to issue subpoenas to the companies to see whether they are spending to fund campaigns that fight climate policy and if so, how much. She said that while the companies had submitted thousands of pages of documents to the committee, many of them were of little use. One company, she said, printed 1,500 pages from its own website.

Contempt of Congress and bad faith.