Poor little Big Oil

In this season of giving, it’s good to remember those less fortunate. Like Exxon and Mobil. Don’t laugh — you try scraping by on profits of $8.4 billion.

Leave some change in that tin cup taped to the gas pump. Say a prayer for higher oil prices. And when you hear the phrases “troubled, struggling oil industry” or “benefits for consumers,” please try to stifle that gagging reflex.

The proposed consolidation of the nation’s two biggest oil companies is big. It’s the biggest merger since Adam merged with Eve, and it’s likely to cause just as much mischief.

The world’s largest company will control more than one-fifth of this country’s gasoline supply. At least 9,000 people will lose their jobs. Downsized executives will get generous golden parachutes, the lunch-pail set (and the unfortunate owners/operators of redundant stations) will get something more shaftlike. The outfit (Exxon) that greased up a portion of the Alaska coast and tried to walk away from the mess will become one with the bunch (Mobil) that has its headquarters in suburban Washington, where there’s not much oil, but a whole lot of Congress. The benefits for the consumer just go on and on.

The reason this merger is so necessary, the public is told, is that oil prices are the lowest in 25 years, so low it’s hardly worth hauling the stuff out of the ground. The Asian recession has cut demand there, the OPEC nations are too busy undercutting each other to bother with unity, exploration techniques and refinery operations are more efficient — in short, that darned free market system is nothing but trouble.

There’s an oil glut, caused by many temporary factors, and so Exxon and Mobil want government anti-trust regulators to be flexible in helping them find a permanent solution to their $8.4-billion-profit crisis. The situation, they say, bears no resemblance to the oil shortages of the early ’70s and ’90s, when nothing could be done except raise prices as high as $35 a barrel and advise the northern states to bundle up.

This might make sense to oil executives, but the uninformed public might have a few questions. If foreign oil at $11 a barrel is cheaper than U.S. oil can be produced, why doesn’t Exxon use the $80 billion it wants to pay for Mobil and buy 7 billion barrels of below-cost foreign oil (roughly two years’ worth of imports)? Set it aside for a rainy day and perhaps force the world price up to $13 — a price experts say would make American fields acceptably profitable without plunging the nation into recession. Oil has fueled the world’s economy for a century now — how many more wrenching global upheavals will be caused by wild fluctuations and profiteering before this essential and finite natural resource is handled with more foresight than Beanie Babies?

This is now in the hands of the Justice Department’s anti-trust squad and the outcome depends upon which team shows up. Will it be one that recently has allowed telecommunications and energy companies to merge in the most uncompetitive ways or the one that just a year ago killed the merger of two office-supply companies lest 8 percent of the nation’s paper-clip reserves fall into monopoly.

Until then, all the public can do is wait and count its blessings. And, of course, share those blessings with the needy folks at Exxon and Mobil. Food baskets are always nice. Baloney seems appropriate.