When asked about oil policy and OPEC's March meeting at a Platts Podium yesterday, a clearly uncomfortable and ill prepared Energy Secretary Steven Chu told reporters that he felt like he's been thrown "into the deep end of the pool."
It could have been poor staff work. Surely, if not Chu himself, someone at DOE should have anticipated an OPEC question or two.
Chu has been energy secretary for scarcely a month, and his background as a Nobel Prize-winning experimental physicist and director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory hardly provided the necessary experience for dealing with international oil politics. Nevertheless, it was surprising that in his first major press briefing Chu should fumble questions about OPEC that energy reporters routinely ask every energy secretary prior to every OPEC meeting.
Chu did not know what the Obama administration would urge OPEC to do at its meeting. He said he would learn "more about this in order to figure out what the US position should be and what the president's position is." He also said he would do what he could to encourage price stability.
But Chu said his focus as secretary would be on matters he has "control over" - developing alternative energy technologies. Perhaps that is a proper and more a productive role for an energy secretary -- focusing on research and development, energy efficiency, and green energy technologies -- rather than as a hat-in-hand supplicant, asking the cartel to maintain or increase oil supplies in the interest of stabilizing or moderating prices.
OPEC is an opaque organization, but on occasion it appeared to respond positively to lobbying by US energy secretaries. However, OPEC will do what's in its own best interests regardless of entreaties from US officials.
Last May, President George Bush visited Saudi Arabia where his request for more oil to help lower high US gasoline prices was declined by the Saudis. Just prior to Bush's trip, Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, predicted that the Saudis "will be polite, but they're not going to really put themselves out to help the president.:"
Of course, the Obama administration is not going to abandon the field and discontinue efforts to lobby OPEC to avoid policies that lead to price spikes and volatility. Eventually, Chu will be up to speed and he, or some designated senior department official, will be the administration's point-person dealing with OPEC.
However, the next time Chu is asked about OPEC perhaps he can resort to the Bush administration's once and always default position -- "Our view is the market needs to be adequately supplied." It was boilerplate, but media outlets treated it as real news and the Bush administration skated by. But until the US curbs its profligate oil use, and that appears to be a priority for Chu, its responses to OPEC may be limited to boilerplate.
Profligate use? The USA's oil use as a percentage of global GDP is in direct correlation to our oil usage as a percentage of global production.
So in effect your pronouncement that our usage of petroleum is "profilgate" is to damn our contribution to world GDP, growth, and overall prosperity.
So Platts is an organization that serves the oil industry? More like the NRDC.
Dear Shocked - Channeling Inspector Renault in Casablanca? GDP is the value of all goods and services produced in the US, and all forms of energy contribute to that productivity. But you miss the point. Perhaps I should have borrowed from President Bush and referred to America's addiction to oil. Which is another way of explaining why we're so dangerously dependent on imported oil and subject to OPEC's ability to manipulate prices. And that's not good for the economy or our overall prosperity.
As for Platts being an organization that "serves the oil industry" --Platts is an independent news organization which reports on the oil industry, as well as a number of other energy producing industries. If you're looking for an organization that serves the oil industry, try the American Petroleum Institute (www.api.org).