Exxon Mobil's "Can't-do" Attitude

In an era of $3.00 gas and oil companies' multi-billion-dollar quarterly profits, it's so refreshing to hear Exxon Mobil's CEO Rex Tillerson talk about how his company will lead the charge to develop alternative fuels and the technology to make them economically viable. Of course, as the CEO of a Fortune 50 company, one absolutely must have a clear vision of what's to come and a concrete plan for how to get there.

So, when asked recently by the Dallas Morning News to describe the coming explosion in alternative fuels development, here's what Mr. Tillerson had to say:

The day will come when we'll move from oil and fossil fuels to something different. It may or may not come in my lifetime. But what I know is, the day I die, I'll probably get driven to my funeral in something that uses hydrocarbons.

For the record, Mr. Tillerson is 54 years old. Surely, he must have a terminal disease that will see his life end soon, right? I mean, he's not seriously talking about being driven to his funeral in thirty years or so in a conventional, gasoline-powered vehicle, is he?

Is Mr. Tillerson joking? Well, as it turns out...not so much.

I think it would be a good idea if people used gasoline a little more efficiently. I'm not worried about it because you know gasoline, oil, natural gas, are so instrumental to people's lives today, both from an economic standpoint and from a quality of life standpoint.

And there is absolutely nothing out there for the next 30 years that's going to change that. ... Now, I'm not saying therefore I have a captive market and I can treat it however I want to. That's not the case either, because there are plenty of other people who want to sell gasoline into the market, too. ...

People will ... alter their habits around how to use gasoline when it gets too high ... unless people have concluded that this price is not inconvenient to them.

So far everything I see others investing in, they're losing money. There have been huge write-offs by some of my competitors of their investments in solar energy. There have been huge write-offs by some of my competitors of their investment in wind.

This biofuels phenomenon is very recent, like in the last six months. And it took an act of Congress to mandate its use and to leave in place a subsidy to make that work.

Okay. So, we've got oil and gas companies making billions of dollars in quarterly profits. We've got the same companies saying they need to spend up to one hundred billion dollars - yes, $100 BILLION - in the coming years to develop new oil refining capacity. And these companies also want to open vast new geographies - such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - to new exploration and drilling. Yet, they are unwilling to invest in a new fuel like ethanol that is proving to be a legitimate alternative to gasoline in countries such as Brazil.

The United States can put men on the proverbial moon, develop microprocessing chips and nanotechnology that is revolutionizing countless industries, and find cures for an untold number of previously incurable diseases. But, for some reason, we can't find a way to do what a third world country like Brazil is doing to ween itself off of carbon-based fuels and foreign energy supplies. Incredible!

The oil companies have money to burn - literally. The U.S. government is spending hundreds of billions to do...whatever the hell it's trying to do in the Middle East. But they can't find a way to fund the development of corn-based ethanol technology...in a land that is among the most agriculturally fertile in the entire world.

Corn? We have corn. Lots of it. In fact, our own government has been paying farmers for years NOT to grow crops such as corn. We're talking about complete energy self-sufficiency for this country. No more oil imports. No more being held hostage by hostile foreign governments and cartels.

Hell, even the Indy 500 will have all of its race cars running on 100% ethanol in next year's race.

Yet, based on the comments of Exxon Mobil's Tillerson, we're just plain stuck with good old oil and gas for the foreseeable future. To do otherwise is just too expensive. It's too time-consuming. It's too uneconomical.

I'll tell you what it is: IT'S INSANE!!! And it's completely unacceptable!