Opinion: Avoid the Temptation to Bash 'Big Oil'

(June 14) -- "You won't lose votes bashing ... Big Oil." That's how equity analyst David Hart put it recently. And on Tuesday, lawmakers will get a chance to test that proposition, as the heads of all the big oil companies get set "for grilling" at a congressional hearing.

But tempting as it is to bash "Big Oil," vilifying an entire industry for the actions of one company is unwarranted and, in the long run, can actually be counterproductive to advancing industry technology and safety.

America's pool of energy talent is, to a certain extent, at the mercy of public opinion. To that end, politics can play a major role in domestic energy development, or the lack thereof. Beltway attacks on Big Oil could discourage the best and brightest minds of America's youth from pursuing related degrees and thereby hinder breakthroughs in technology and processes.

President Barack Obama has acknowledged that traditional energy sources are going to play a major role in America's energy needs for the near term, explaining that "given our energy needs, in order to sustain economic growth, produce jobs and keep our businesses competitive, we're going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel." That's because fossil fuels currently provide 85 percent of our energy, compared with just 7.3 percent coming from renewable sources.

The Energy Information Administration and other experts have made it clear that we will continue to rely heavily on oil and gas for at least the next 40 years as new sources develop and become more affordable. A set of fresh new minds could bring a lot to the table during that time.

That won't happen if political opportunists hijack the response to this disastrous yet anomalous incident. If rhetoric smothers reason, America could find itself in the same situation we faced following the Three Mile Island incident.

In 1979, a partial meltdown of one of Pennsylvania's nuclear plants caused panic but no injuries. However, fictional fears of Hollywood's "China Syndrome" in combination with overblown reports from officials during initial phases of the accident triggered a disproportionate, unfounded backlash against nuclear power among the American public.

In the two decades following the incident, the U.S. saw a substantial drop in nuclear engineering bachelor's degrees. Some nuclear engineering programs shut down altogether. In his first State of the Union address, in 1993, President Bill Clinton even announced plans to eliminate federally supported nuclear programs, saying they were "no longer needed."

It's no surprise, then, that according to the American Nuclear Society, we now boast less than half of the 65 nuclear engineering programs that existed in America in 1980.

Though undergraduate enrollments in nuclear engineering in 2008 were almost triple that at the start of the decade, they're still well below the numbers reported from the mid-1970s. Keep in mind that this fate befell an industry that supplies a small fraction of America's energy demand.

Given the fact that our traditional energy needs are forecast to increase 35 percent over the next 20 years, we can't afford to suffer a similar higher-education fallout. Unfortunately, Washington is reverting to business as usual and leveraging the Gulf of Mexico spill to score cheap political points.

The U.S. must continue to utilize its natural resources well into the future, and using a single incident to take potshots at America's energy sector ignores a record of excellence -- more than 50,000 offshore wells safely drilled -- and does little to advance the objectives of improved safety and advances in prevention and cleanup technology.

Moving forward, we will no doubt see many politicians step up to the podium to decry our oil and gas sectors, call for moratoriums and point fingers. The real question arising from these grandiose spectacles should be: Whose interests are you serving, because it sure isn't America's.

Actions have consequences. And some of the actions by the White House and some in Congress will have unintended ones.

William O'Keefe, chief executive officer of the George C. Marshall Institute, is president of Solutions Consulting Inc.


To submit an op-ed or letter to the editor, write to opinion@aolnews.com.