Dec 12, 2006 8:32 am US/Central
Project Energy: Shell Oil President On Fuel Prices
by Don Shelby
(WCCO)
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Shell Oil President John Hofmeister recently sat down with WCCO-TV's Don Shelby for a one-on-one interview about energy.
CBS
Worse mileage means paying more at the pump and many Minnesotans are already worried about what they are paying to fill their cars.
As part of Project Energy, Don Shelby got the chance to sit down with the president of Shell Oil, John Hofmeister, to talk about the price of gas.
Hofmeister has been traveling around the country with a message about how Americans need to learn more about energy -- where it comes from and how we use it -- because our future depends on it.
Shelby:Do you believe in global warming?
Hofmeister:Shell believes that the climate change issues that we face include manmade contributions to what's called global warming. For Shell, we are not experts in the science of global warming.
On the other hand, we believe the debate is over. We believe that when 90 percent of the world's leaders are concerned about global warming, call for solutions, our job is not to argue the science. Our job is not to argue the alternative.
Our job is to work with political leaders around the world to solve the problem. And that's what we're committed to do.
Shelby:Let me ask you a question, a personal question. You're driving down the street where you live and you see car upon car, truck upon truck, going by that you note in your research, in what your analysts have told you, are highly inefficient vehicles. What is your visceral reaction to seeing that?
Hofmeister:Well it's probably a complex visceral reaction. On the one hand, I love living in America, the land of choice, the land of freedom and the land where individuals can choose to do what they want to do.
So ... as an energy company executive who is working very hard to supply the demand to the nation, it can be very frustrating to realize that we are supplying a demand to an inefficient use of fuel, which when the price goes up, we get accused -- as we did this past year -- of price gouging. We don't price gouge. Shell prices according to market.
We don't believe in price gouging, we wouldn't consider it. But when you see the inefficient use driving the demand against a very constrained supply and we get blamed for high prices, then it's very frustrating.
Shelby:Do you believe that conventional oil and in conventional, I might say sort of the quick, easy oil, is a finite supply?
Hofmeister:I wouldn't say that conventional, easy oil is done yet, but it is in decline and it may have peaked in terms of our U.S. supply of conventional. But unconventional oil has not yet been tapped in any meaningful way.
Shelby:Is it your opinion, is it Shell's opinion, that you cannot solve our energy problems that the world is facing if people are not educated about energy?
Hofmeister:The lifeblood of the American economy is energy. The lifeblood of our future environmental sustainability is around how we manage energy and yet our school systems, based on the research we've done, do not teach energy as part of the curricula. We can't tell the schools what to do, but we believe that long-term, informed consumers, educated customers, are better consumers, better customers.
Shelby:Shell will stay in business a lot longer if people become efficient in their use of energy.
Hofmeister:I believe that's true.
(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
Video: Don Shelby's Full Interview With Shell President
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