Is It Still The Grand Oil Party? (The politics of oil) - Business Week

When it comes to having a nose for changing political winds in Washington, your prototypical oil industry CEO bears an uncanny resemblance to Alfred E. Neuman. Only a week after two normally reliable and pliant Republicans -- House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.) -- leveled rhetorical broadsides at Big Oil for record third-quarter profits, sky-high prices, and failure to commit to new refineries, many energy executives are brushing aside the barbs as mere cover-your-tail rhetoric from fretful friends. After all, Republicans received more than $20 million from energy interests in the last election, and the two oilmen who run the White House have never gotten tough with their political benefactors. So you can understand why Big Oil's response to Republican potshots is: What, me worry?

"This is more an image thing than a substance thing," says one industry lobbyist. Indeed, an internal ExxonMobil document obtained by BusinessWeek argues that the company's profits are reasonable -- far more so than the financial industry; that prices are driven by supply and demand; and that Congress should "pause" before doing anything dramatic.

But with voters seething over energy prices and GOP leaders under an ethical cloud, Republicans up against a political wall might, for the first time, take action against an industry that funnels 80% of its political contributions their way. "House Republicans have acted" by giving the industry tax breaks, Hastert says. "Now the oil companies need to do their part."

Energy leaders will run into a PR buzz saw on Nov. 8 when Senate Republicans hold hearings on energy prices. Scheduled to face pointed questions: Exxon Mobil (XOM ) CEO Lee Raymond, ConocoPhillips (COP ) CEO Jim Mulva, and John Hofmeister, president of Royal Dutch/Shell Group's (RD ) U.S. operation. "They don't know what's going to hit them," says one oil lobbyist. "They're not going to have one friend up there.... You can't go reporting record profits and explain it away as supply and demand." The same lobbyist says he's reminding clients of the fate of Big Tobacco, a once-powerful force on the Hill. "The message to these guys is, 'The American public thinks you are evil."'

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_46/c3959080.htm?chan=db

Any coverage on the Nov. 8 hearings?