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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 14, 1986)
Page 2/The Battalion/Monday, April 14, 1986 Opinion Black gold? Recent oil price drop accentuates greater problems. Bill By I concluded a speech in Los An geles on Nov. 3, 1960, by predicting economic chaos and Michel T. Halbouty (I lies I Columnist a threat to national security as a result of failure to increase domestic oil produc tion. That prediction came true with 1973-74 energy crisis. What I said then applies today. The present volatile en ergy price and supply situation has many aspects of comparison with the energy dilemmas we faced in the ’60s and ’70s. on exploration, companies could take a lower profit and still maintain the em ployees and sustain reasonable and ef fective exploration activities. In this way, they could build for the future. Such, unfortunately, is not the case and when the turn-around comes, the same companies will not have the benefit of dedicated, experienced professionals. Instead they will be forced to hire inex perienced and untrained personnel. Greater sums Will be spent on trying to catch up than were saved by cutting back. E rHcfflNW wimn miw urns r ...AND WE BOW WWT TO SK THE END OF HIE GLUT, RIGHT? Domestic oil production is falling; drilling is down to a dramatic low equal only to that of the mid ’70s; our oil im ports are gradually increasing; compa nies are going under; massive layoffs are regular occurrences; and budget cutbacks in exploration and production, as well as in research and development, are reported almost daily. But what got us into this sorry state has been almost totally forgotten or ig nored by the media. Today’s dangerous retrenchment trend was precipitated by the hostile raids on the industry — raids which saddled companies with huge debts, triggering cutbacks and person nel layoffs. The recent oil price slide has only accentuated the problem and acce lerated the attrition. Personnel and exploration cutbacks are severe, and it seems that more will occur. What disturbs me most is the complete disregard for the human el ement. It is a sad commentary of our morality in doing business that the wel fare of those who sustain the growth of business is being neglected at best and ignored at worst. Mass layoffs of per sonnel for the sake of paying the highest dividend or sustaining the dividend even though a reasonable profit can be made without cutbacks is counterpro ductive. Instead of letting thousands of em ployees go and drastically cutting back The impact of exploration cuts and employee layoffs is felt in all sectors of the petroleum industry. The multiplier effect of these cuts will soon be felt throughout the communities where those cuts were made. The job loss toll has reached the hundreds of thousands since the raiders and their Wall Street cohorts started their assault on the pe troleum industry. Eventually the nation as a whole will experience the effects of the devastation left in the wake of hos tile raider demolition tactics and the added thrust of crude oil price declines. As our domestic oil production dwin dles and companies further reduce their exploration programs, our imports of crude oil and products from foreign na tions will increase. From that point it would be only a matter of time until im ports set record highs, and America is once again at the mercy of foreign car tels. Our domestic petroleum is the only available dependable supply. Other sources are subject to nationalization, expropriation, confiscation by exorbi tant taxation, the caprice of foreign sov ereigns, war and other emergency dis connections. A shift in oil import dependence translates into danger for the country as a whole, and especially impacts our na tional militai'y security. Without secure petroleum supplies to fuel our military 1 REGULAR T79 'no-lead' Q79 ■ I Of Ik bluet’r. Tidav in tl Jem Cente el u red 12 oWners. THie show Hit audien ium. Tim Will lard took li heir per for le.’ Willian Vom Idaho, alety show “Not N jhythm-and jlaie for pe vrilten by fhe group fetes, Phil ferry dreg Kens, Aai icon. "The Pei 'ilar/vocali (nd Benny )lace. phe threi wards of J ,pet lively. Also pei f ■"Aggie ’ thousands, ante troup md played wipers,” t jination fe; ind Jerry ' complex, we are at a disadvantage among world nations in the event of hostilities or outright war. If our do mestic petroleum industry cannot pro vide those secure supplies, we would stand little chance of sustaining, much less winning, any confrontation. The world still runs on oil energy, and it will for decades to come. As a re sult of lower oil prices, most of our alter nate energy research and developing projects have been curtailed or cancelled. Our nuclear power policy is ludicrous, prohibiting nuclear energy from taking its valuable place in our en ergy markets. Restrictive fuel use regu lations further hamper our devel opment of increased energy security. And with the fall in oil prices, other en ergy resource prices also lose ground. What we must not do at this time is underestimate the influence of foreign oil exporters. The American petroleum industry’s retrenchment in the wake of raider threats and foreign producers’ continuing to Hood world oil markets to drive prices down add up to excessive U.S. oil import dependence. The petroleum industry, which is so vital to our national security, must be strengthened instead of weakened. To stave off the possibility of another oil crisis we must take immediate and re sponsible measures. Legislation which Whi des has been proposed by Congressiet removing the onerous, punitiu counterproductive regulations and of past years must be supported, those proposals which would hant I industry and the country in the term must be opposed. If we don’t defuse the timebor sociaied with the continuousdropis mestic exploration, we willbefacec another, far worse crisis of oil pnf lorried calation and oil import dependr-i ehances. likes of which we have neverseen I Recall showed 1 Michel T. Halbouty, Class ol i Bill Clem chairman of the board and chiefti (dl day c utive officer of the Michel T. Halia * um Energy Co. IV P ■lection. MARS new opii Bailing e; pn gul: ov. Mai but the losers are those laid off, not the oil companie At last, the truly needy have sur faced. They are not the hungry, about whom the evidence is only anecdotal (say, have you heard the anecdote about the starving kid?) or the sick or those chislers still When oil was at $35 a barrel overseas, it was $35 a barrel here. Now oil is selling for as low as $10 and the domestic oil in dustry is loathe to go along. It cites the national security. Save the oil industry for when you really need it. Richard Cohen on welfare. It is the domestic oil indus try which is hurting plenty, and in the name of national security it is singing a version of the Sophie Tucker torch song: One of these days, you’re gonna miss me, baby. Vice President George Bush has cited national security. So has Texas Gov. Mark White. Neither man would dare plea for an industry that was thrilled to match the OPEC nations dollar for dol lar — as long as the price was rising. In Washington, whenever anyone cites national security, it is time to reach for your wallet. National security is at stake when some congressman cries about the closing of a military base in his district or the loss of a contract to a firm that (what a coincidence!) also happens to be in his district. The same coin cidence compels the two Texans, White and Bush, to take the long view when it comes to oil. Better pay a little bit more now to ensure that you have oil when you need it: National security says so. Penn. A year after the first well was brought in, the barrel price was $20; a year later it was 10 cents. Western Penn sylvania produced both a pattern and an expression to describe it: The bottom fell out of the market. It took only a short time for the oil industry to learn that the only way to make money was to control production. John D. Rockefeller pioneered the manipulation of the mar ket. The Texas Railroad Commission, the Seven Sisters and OPEC merely fol lowed. It is only a matter of time until production will be restricted again. get mentioned. In fact, you think that the Texas unemployment rate of 8.4 percent is comprised of nothing but capped wells. In a national television ap pearance, White acted as if to mention people would be an insult to Texas’ spirit. In truth, there is something to what they say. But just as surely as oil is down, it will someday go up. This has been the historic pattern of this commodity ever discovered it in Titusville, since we In the meantime, the real loser is not national security or some entity called the oil industry. In a scale based upon need, it is not even the independents or their investors — and certainly not the major producers or distributors. In stead, it is the people who are out of work, the many thousands of them in the industry and all the rest who rely on it in one way or another. They hardly Nonsense. Once again, the Reagan administration’s refusal to have even a semblance of industrial policy is ruining the lives of thousands, maybe millions, of people. Workers who had lost their jobs in the mills of the North not so long ago were told to stop crying, enlist in the army of the Protestant Ethic and march to the Sun Belt. That’s where there were jobs aplenty, a cornucopia of entrepre neurial opportunity. Now some of the same people who went South to work are out of work. Time to hit the road again. There are the invisible people of the current oil crisis or boom — depending, of course, on how you look at almost never get mentioned, anil plea for either higher pricesorati port lee is almost never madeii name. Conservative dogma hasi mealed the American fabric that considered just plain dreamy tosai people are being hurt and livesnu For that you get dismissed assoiw of dreamer, a central planner,asofi or, worst of all, a liberal. I can’t tell you what the properts for the government should be:wlitt it should intervene or allow the® to work its (black?) magic. I that out in oil country, whichisus also cattle and farming country,! pression has settled over the land economic tripod of a region hasli kicked out from under it, and(G« Bush and Mark White notwithstanc it is not national security that is sie ing, but the people who lived one has put a cap on their pain. Richard Cohen is a columnist In Washington Post Writers Group, c i Former students invest in Aggies’ integrity Suppose you’ve got an extra mil lion dollars. Would you give it to 36,000 strang ers — people who listen to a differ ent kind of music, wear their hair and their clothes differently and are so preoccu- Cynthia Gay pied with their own lives that they may never care about your gift? As inexplicably generous as it may seem, Aggie grads continue to give the products of their years of labor to stu dents — and they do it in a fairy god mother fashion, sticking a long saber in the cynical, hot-air-balloon concept that in this world one only gives to get. But to the grads, it’s all very simple — Aggies help Aggies. Tradition. We don’t earn it, we don’t deserve it, but they’re willing to invest in Aggieland simply be cause they are convinced we all share something— integrity. When an Aggie with a gold ring and a maroon blazer puts that integrity into action, he thinks of industriousness, self-discipline, flexibility, a cool head under pressure, a keen eye for perfec tion and a conviction that the right men tal attitude means subordinating the self to focus on the objective. He thinks of the kind of person he’d like to hire, and more importantly, like to know. The Association of Former Students had a banner year in 1985, with Aggies setting a donations record of $3.4 mil lion in unrestricted funds — 18 percent more than last year. What makes those people over in the Forsyth Alumni Cen ter especially pleased is that all this money is unrestricted. Which means that they and the University administra tion channel these maroon-tinted greenbacks wherever they feel A&M needs it most. Last year a half million dollars went to academic programs and scholarships and another $300,000 was spent to en rich student and faculty programs, to reward professors for teaching excel lence and to send them on faculty study leaves. But just let us try to stammer a “thank you” to these rich old Ags, and they’ll reach for a handshake to thank us —just for going to school here. Take last week end, for instance, when 82 students re ceived a handshake and a gift from the association for their academic achieve ment or A&M involvement outside the classroom. There was a sentiment that winning awards meant winning for A&M. There must be some hitch, right? But not only are these monies unconditio nal, they come from a group of grad uates with the highest percentage of participation in giving for any college or university in America. The heart of the former students’ giving is the Century Club, which translates into 18,589 Ag gies who plucked out at least $100 apiece in 1985. Not content with donations to the as sociation alone, last year former stu dents also gave another $16 million in gifts directly to the University and the Development Foundation, which over sees contributions such as real estate or wills. The first months of 1986 have been highlighted by one Aggie who gave the University over $13 million worth of land, another who handed over $5 million worth of art to be per manently displayed in the Memorial Student Center and the wife of an Aggie who gave a $1 million MSG endowment for international travel. So here we sit, fat-cat beneficiaries watching the Clayton Williams Jr. Alumni Center go up and wondering why former students don’t spend more on our education. Or we downgrade the bell tower because we suspect that a man whose name we can’t remember must have built it to be remembered. We’re dead wrong when we think this way, and we’re cheating ourselves out of the encouraging realization that some old Ag out there is waking up and wonder ing how much he can give to A&M and to us. When we meet former students or hear of their gifts, we can’t afford to for get that for most old Ags the Corps ex perience shaped their ideals, their char acter and is the source of their love for A&M. We who have said fewer “how- dies” and endured less hardships still are trusted by old Ags simply because we’re here. To further this most important tradi tion of integrity, we must take a hard look at ourselves, where we’ve come from and where we’re going. Most of us don’t answer to a higher rank for our thoughts and actions, so our individual task is that much more difficult. Only'by disciplining ourselves can we be worthy of these continuing contributions and the faith that goes with them. Otherwise, we may never know the tender urge in later years to make a do nation to another Aggie. Cynthia Gay is a junior journalism ma jor and a columnist forThe Battalion. The Battalion (USPS 045 360) Member of T exas Press Association Southwest Journalism Conference The Battalion Editorial Board Michelle Powe, Editor Kay Mallett, Managing Editor Loren Steffy, Opinion Page Editor Jerry Oslin, City Editor Cathie Anderson, Slews Editor Travis Tingle, Sports Editor The Battalion Staff Assistant City Editors. Kirsten Di- Scott Sutheil Assistant News Editors SueKid 1 Brad Assistant Sports Editors Ken)- Charean\' | l" ; Entertainment Editors BillHfl TriciaPi ;i Photo Editor .Make-up Editor Richard:"® 1- Morning Eiditor CherylB 11 ! Staff Artist Mindy OH Editorial Policy The Battalion is a non-profit, se//-suf)/wrM<JJj pvt operated as a community serrke to J Btyun-College Station Opinions expressed in The ftiira/io/i are il 1 ®'! 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