Family Feud

If ExxonMobil was looking to pick a fight with Detroit, it succeeded. After the oil company ran an ad (see it here in pdf) questioning why the average fuel economy of American cars has "remained unchanged in two decades," a Chrysler spokesman countered the sucker punch with an uppercut of his own:

Despite a documented history of blowing their exorbitant profits on outlandish executive salaries and stock buybacks, and hoarding their bounty by avoiding technologies, policies and legislation that would protect the population and environment and lower fuel costs, Big Oil insists on transferring all of that responsibility on the auto companies.

As the Sierra Club's Daniel Becker tells the Detroit News, both sides in the slugfest are right (and therefore wrong):

The auto industry continues to make gas-guzzling vehicles with antiquated technology rather than using modern, fuel-efficient technology. At the same time, the oil industry is perfectly happy to have people addicted to their product.

So what triggered the skirmish? For one thing, Exxon seems desperate to deflect attention from its obscene profits. At the same time it may hope to placate shareholders and policymakers who are beginning to notice the writing on the wall with respect to climate change and Peak Oil.

Earlier this spring the oil giant ran another high-profile ad (see it here) refuting Peak Oil, claiming that that oil reserves are so vast that the peak is nowhere in sight. Moreover, the company insists it is getting better "technically and environmentally" at tapping the resource. Over at Scientific American Observations -- the magazine's blog -- staff writer Wayt Gibbs begs to differ. Rather than mere hand-waving, however, Gibbs provides real analysis, buttressing his argument with a quote from the annual outlook report of the trade journal World Oil:

2005 will go down in history books as perhaps the poorest year for exploration success for both oil and gas since World War II. This dismal success was not for lack of effort. Record amounts of funds are being plowed into E&P [exploration and production] capital spending, which is why all the world's rigs are now in use.

Gibbs notes that even Bush's Department of Energy recognizes the growing consensus that the end of cheap oil is fast approaching. Some oil companies and some automakers seem prepared to repond to that reality. For ExxonMobil and Chrysler, the response appears to be scapegoating and wishful thinking.