Pump (Pump!)

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cars are a big part of American culture

there is different is the people who

make up our country and when it comes to

choosing a car the options are pretty

much limitless but cars aren't the only

thing we have unlimited choice in

Americans have incredible choice in the

electronic devices that they use they

have incredible choice in the clothes

that they wear they have incredible

choice of the restaurants that they go

to incredible choice in grocery stores

incredible choice in religious

denominations that they want to practice

but in the United States for most of the

last 100 years Americans have had no

fuel choice when it comes to one of our

most important needs

boil our lack of choice has serious

consequences

this monopoly on our fuel supply is

hurting us much worse than we realize

this is the story of oil

and how we can finally break the

monopoly and end our oil addiction when

oil was first discovered it was refined

into kerosene for lamps it was used for

illumination not transportation a young

Cleveland businessman saw great potential

he realized that drilling for oil was

risky but refining oil was steady money

so he built his first refinery his name

was john d rockefeller his company

became known as Standard Oil by 1880

rockefeller-controlled over 90% of the

US oil business

Standard Oil became a monopoly that

charged exorbitant prices and eventually

the public got fed up they demanded that

President Theodore Roosevelt take action

he announced antitrust indictments

against Standard Oil and in 1911 the US

Supreme Court found the Standard Oil

Company guilty of monopolizing the fuel

market

the ruling splintered it into 34

powerful independent oil companies

and Rockefeller who had stock in all the

newly-formed oil companies became the

richest man of the modern age much has

changed since the breakup of the

Standard Oil monopoly but much remains

the same Americans still have no choice

in fuel and the companies that supply

that fuel have immense power over our

lives when I was president of Shell Oil

Company I would often get asked the

question how do you live in your skin

the American people don't like oil

companies and they don't like the

executives who run all companies who

they don't even know in a public that so

relies upon transportation as a way of life

the main suppliers of that

transportation meaning the oil companies

are really not favored at all there's a

hostility that exists between oil

companies and consumers I can remember

one of the Senators looking over his

glasses at me and questioning how I

slept at night whether I had any moral

fiber in my body for the extortionate

prices that I was charging his

constituents first time first question

to me on Meet the Press do you know how

much people in this country hate you

crude oil comes in train car loads or it

comes in a pipeline you cook that oil

and you cook it under pressure like you

would cook food in a pressure cooker as

that oil cooks in a refinery what's in

that crude oil barrel separates then it

goes into the gasoline stage there's no

doubt this will be called the oil age we

really never stop to think about it but

this entire civilization is made out of

and move by crude oil oil is everywhere

in our lives we know it's in our

vehicles we're used to using it to fill

up the tank oil is in medicines oil

lubricates almost everything that moves

in our economy oil is in our clothes oil

is in the rug your stain

the material of the chair you're sitting

it it's in every piece of plastic that's

made we live in a society in which we

rely upon personal mobility as the

primary means of transportation and

there's no public transportation system

to rely upon in the United States of

America as an alternative to high prices

or shortages America wasn't always

without transportation choices once upon

a time we had the best and cheapest

public transportation in the world the

new streamlined streetcars at Los

Angeles the latest in big town

transportation on rail people love the

trolleys they can hop off they could hop

on all the trolleys ran out of

electricity it was said that you could

go from San Diego to New York City on a

trolley just by transferring

transferring and transferring Standard

Oil Mack truck Firestone Phillips

Petroleum and General Motors all got

together to create a secret company they

would buy up all the trolley systems

they would buy them in Galesburg

Illinois in Baltimore in Florida in Los

Angeles the rails were pulled up the

trolley cars themselves were burned in

public bonfires and they replaced them

with smelly oil consuming motor buses

eventually the federal government

discovered that this was a conspiracy to

subvert mass transit all five

corporations were indicted they were

tried they were found guilty a corporate

conspiracy was responsible for

destroying the trolleys in America with

cheap public electric transportation

eliminated by oil and car companies the

vision of America's future switched from

rails to roads

during the 1950's we introduced the

biggest public works project in history

the interstate highway system and so we

started to connect the entire country in

a massive Public Works highway system

that allowed us to build out suburbs and

create shopping malls and mature the

auto age and the consumer society and

that was a big leap forward in growth

Americans loved mobility they just want

to go a large part of America's love

affair with cars is that it's freedom it

means you can go where you want when you

want with who you want that all depends

upon an affordable level of gasoline and

that's what makes the economy go around

for six decades we had this freedom in

the world had this freedom and suddenly

in the 1970s that freedom came to a

screeching halt Egypt and Syria are at

war with Israel today in 1973 Egypt and

Syria attacked Israel

out of this ensuing conflict OPEC sees

the opportunity to cut the supply of oil

worldwide the oil-producing countries of

the Arab world decided to use their oil

as a political weapon the threat was

economic if you don't change your

foreign policy we will cut off your oil

supply and average Americans will not be

able to do their basic life activities

it had devastating effects on the

American economy it caused mass

unemployment there were lines to any job

that anybody had to offer we would have

to get up at five o'clock in the morning

because this one station for the entire

community would run out of gasoline by

8:00 in the morning people could only

get 10 gallons they could only get it

every other day people were angry at not

having any power over their life I got

to tell you Americans when they stand in

a gas line they're not that friendly one

day I'm pulling into the gas station the

guy knows me and I notice he's got guns

on his hips six shooters on each hip

he said I'll fight to the death to

protect my gas

it made such an impact on me that I've

spent my entire career thinking about

this problem how do we solve the problem

that OPEC the Organization of Petroleum

Exporting Countries this cartel that was

created how do we get to a place where

they can't control the destiny of an

average American OPEC the Organization

of Petroleum Exporting Countries at

Saudi Arabia Iran Venezuela etc sit on

78% of conventional oil reserves so

we're facing a situation in which this

market the oil market is dominated by a