Word: oilmen
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...company chiefs will not concede that they have diverted unusually large amounts of petroleum from the U.S. to Europe or Japan. But a spokesman for Phillips Petroleum last week asserted that several large companies are indeed holding back imports because of the U.S. crude allocation. Most oilmen explain the low level of U.S. imports by making two arguments: they must scrupulously observe the Arab embargo because they operate in the Arab countries only with the sufferance of the host governments, and they cannot scant Europe and Japan by shifting non-Arab oil to the U.S. because that would open...
Exxon is gearing up to close the gap as much as it can. The company is rich in reserves of what oilmen call "politically insensitive crude"-oil least subject to nationalization. It is among the largest developers of the two richest fields discovered in the past decade: in the North Sea and on Alaska's North Slope. Both should reach peak output around 1980. Exxon also owns most of a field off Santa Barbara, Calif., which holds reserves estimated as high as 1 billion bbl. but cannot be fully exploited until environmentalist objections are overcome. More oil surely lurks beneath...
...change has not only afflicted all oilmen but has also left them open to new forms of criticism. All have been tarred with the same vague but pervasive public suspicion that they have conspired to create the shortage-a charge for which there is no evidence-or at minimum have taken advantage of it to enrich themselves by raising prices. Much of the attack focuses on Exxon's executives, ranging downward from Canadian-born Chairman John Kenneth Jamieson (see box following page). Such men are several light-years removed from the vulgar, wheeler-dealer, overnight Texas oil millionaires of popular...
Independent Texas oilmen, for instance, often ask to lease wells that major oil companies are not operating. Some companies refer all bids to corporate directors, who may take years to answer; Exxon's local executives can usually return a yes or no answer within two weeks. Independent oilmen, indeed, almost unanimously give Exxon credit for not only swift but fair dealing. Many say that Exxon will not sign a sale, purchase or lease contract unless its officials are convinced that the transaction is good for both parties...
Flak From Friends. Even the industry's former best friends in Washington now find it politic to make anti-oil noises. House Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur Mills, who opened hearings on oil taxes last week, says he has told oilmen that they receive unwarranted special preferences. The Nixon Administration has proposed a "windfall-profits tax" (actually an excise tax on sales), and will also seek to limit the amount of foreign tax payments that oil companies can deduct from their U.S. taxes. Treasury Secretary George Shultz calculates that if the limit were in effect now, oil companies this year...