Why We Hate the Oil Companies by John Hofmeister

Author:John Hofmeister
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2010-04-12T04:00:00+00:00

8

OIL AND GAS: UNLOVABLE AND UNAVOIDABLE.

UTILITIES: DITTO!

The oil and gas industry, locked in its paradigm,

is unlovable but essential. So quit complaining and get used to it.

On a brilliant, blue-sky Saturday morning in August 2006, I found myself in Erie, Pennsylvania, on a side trip during my Shell Oil outreach tour. My weekend itinerary included stopping by local Shell stations, unannounced, to chat with store managers and customers. Erie is a friendly, family city. Its industrial past is being transformed by postindustrial efforts from entrepreneurial services and information management companies. I was familiar with the area, having lived there for several years early in my career. The summers are fantastic; people get out and enjoy their weekends. I wanted to talk with them.

My first store visit could not have gone better. The manager was not present but the cashier, a young lady with less than a year of experience, greeted me with a friendly hello and smile as I entered. She was cleaning an already shining checkout counter, and her broom and dust pan were right behind her. The store was bright, cheery, with plenty of Shell promotional materials highlighting our popular NASCAR sponsorship. The shelves were stocked, neat, the freezers full, the beverage refrigerators well arrayed. You could smell the morning coffee, and that’s where I went first.

Over a fresh cup of black coffee we talked about her time at the Shell station. She said her customers were mostly local, friendly, and regular. They weren’t too happy about the rising gas prices, but she said no one had so far blamed her, so that was good. She asked who I was. I explained that I worked for Shell out of Houston and, when I was on the road, liked to drop into local Shell stations to get a sense of how things were going. I didn’t play the president card; that’s a good way to close down an otherwise open conversation. She said she didn’t know much about Shell, since her station was operated by a jobber, a third-party intermediary, a person who leases and runs but does not own the station. But she thought the tanker delivery people were really nice, always prompt, regardless of the weather or time of day.

Strolling outside I found a few customers filling up. In response to my questions, people seemed friendly and open. Interestingly, no one asked me who I was. One person told me he stopped here and always bought Shell whenever he needed gas because of his Shell MasterCard and the discount he got. Another person said he and his family lived a few blocks away, and he believed in doing business in the neighborhood. He also said he liked the people who worked at the station and confirmed that it was always clean as a whistle, not like some other stations around town. Another person said he bought gas there because he believed in supporting American companies first, either Shell or Exxon.

A stop to see the bathroom, which was as

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