Jim Jubak on ExxonMobil

Jim Jubak has written the following in Defence of the company everyone loves to hate:

Stop whining; ExxonMobil is doing its job

Want to get mad at somebody? How about oil-company executives like Lee Raymond, who resigned as chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil last December after pocketing $4 million in salary, $4.9 million in bonus and $32 million in stock -- just for 2005? Or the boneheads in Washington who, flush with oil and auto company campaign dollars, have kept automobile mileage standards stuck at the same level since 1985?

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Want a short-term fix? Drive less. Drive slower. Car pool. Take a bus. Buy a more energy-efficient car. Put a solar hot water heater on your roof. Lobby Congress to stand up to Detroit and require higher miles per gallon in the cars it builds.

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That's because it's getting harder and harder to find significant new oil reserves -- and more expensive to develop them. It simply costs more to produce oil from deep ocean sites or to extract natural gas from tight sands and oil shales. Inflation in the oilfields is running at 10% to 15% annually because everything from pipe to drilling rigs is in high demand and tight supply.