Neff Zone Column

Print Edition: February 4, 2006

OIL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL?

President Bush’s State of the Union speech will be dissected this week by experts far more brilliant than yours truly. There is no doubt, however, that he laid out some big goals that affect us all. The test will be to see if has the wherewithal to get anything accomplished.

One of the major goals of the President is to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil. This is a laudable goal, one that all of us can get behind regardless of political affiliation. What worries me is that previous presidents have had the same intention to no avail. In 1973, Richard Nixon said: "At the end of the decade in the year 1980 the United States will not be dependent on any country for the energy we need." That’s a quarter century ago and are we any less dependent? Why is that?

The answer may lie in this week’s announcement that Exxon Mobil posted its 2005 profit statement and it’s the largest profit of any company at any time in U.S. history -- $36.13 billion. Let me put that into perspective for you. The company’s gross revenue for the year was $371 billion, topping the $340 billion gross domestic output of Saudi Arabia.

Add the profits for Exxon to that of ConocoPhillips and Chevron and the total is a staggering $63 billion. This is all part of an energy policy crafted behind closed doors by Vice President Cheney and energy company executives and it looks like it’s working just like they hoped it would.

Now, balance all that against the President’s admirable plan to spend, according to some reports, $50 billion over 20 years to develop alternative sources of energy. That’s a drop in the oilcan compared to Exxon profits. The aim is to reduce Middle Eastern oil imports by 75% by 2025, but we only get about 20% of our imported oil from the Middle East so even if the initiative is successful it won’t make much of an impact.

And here are more questions. Say the U.S. does invent alternative sources of energy. Do you think Exxon will be standing by the wayside all of that time just waiting to be put out of business? After the U.S., meaning all of us in the form of our taxpayer dollars, develops this new technology, who will reap the benefits? Will the government get in the energy supply business? After all, the technology would have been created for the public good. Or will companies like Exxon lobby a future vice president to hand the technology over to them for distribution, thereby reaping even more profits?

What I’m getting at is that perhaps foreign oil is not what needs to be dealt with here but rather an entity closer to home which has its headquarters in, say, Texas. Perhaps President Bush is in the same fix as presidents before him, namely that even though his goal of energy independence is expansive, visionary, and 100% correct, the global companies that control the energy are so omnisciently powerful that their plans for our future dwarf that of any president. How to get out of their clutches is the real challenge, and up to now no one has had the muscle or desire to break the stranglehold.

I keep remembering something my late father, Big Don, used to say: "We won’t ever see alternative energy until Standard Oil can figure out how to charge us for the sun."

SHIFT GEARS. I always like to pass along nifty things about the Internet and I know every parent is concerned about how to keep their children safe while they surf the web.

Google is one of the most widely used search engines, but did you know there is a Google Safe Search. In Safe Search mode, websites that contain adult content, explicit images, and offensive terms are filtered out.

You can set up Google Safe Search on your home computer. Go to www.google.com and click on Make Google Your Home Page. Once it’s your home page click on Preferences, set the Safe Search filtering to "strict" and click Save Preferences. It’s not failsafe, but it does a pretty impressive filtering job.

Yahoo has the same option. Make Yahoo your home page, then look in the Advanced – Safe Search Filter – Preferences section to set it up. What I don’t like about the Yahoo filter, though, is that it keeps asking if you want to turn the filter off, something Google does not make obvious for someone to do.

Jim Neff is a local columnist. Comments to neffzone@gmail.com. Read Neff Zone columns online at www.neffzone.com/cadillacnews.