An interesting read is from 1999 when Steve Layton, President and CEO of Equinox Oil testified about *low* oil prices and what was causing them and the reason why the price was going that low. He testified before Congress as part of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, also known as ‘the little guys’ the small domestic production concerns in the US. If we can’t be bothered to listen to them and their concerns during low oil prices and what was happening to the market at that point then why, praytell, should we listen to anyone today who complains about high oil prices when they were part of the outcome of what was happening during low oil prices and ignored the warnings?
The larger, transnational firms can adjust to any national legislation and utilize caps, limits, taxes and such on domestic firms to undermine them because of the very size differences between the transnationals and the domestic firms. So every time we hear about regulation on the oil industry or attempts to garner ‘windfall profits taxes’ that is directly targeted at the small producers and their ability to operate in the marketplace. It is these very same producers that get the US the bulk of its oil, in case that has been forgotten. But this requires looking at the global marketplace and the domestic marketplace, realizing the limits of what can be done via legislation and deciding if we are going to help our own oil industries or *not*. If you want to stop Exxon/Mobil and its transnational brethren from getting larger by gobbling up small domestic concerns failing due to regulations our government imposes, then that solution is one that must look to ourselves, *first*. It always sounds so nice to target Big Oil, but the bullets usually go through the hard working small producers and independents in the US *first*.
