Black-Gold Booster

Sept. 3, 2007 issue - Lee Raymond succeeded as an oilman by staying focused on oil. (In the mid-1980s, he was responsible for unwinding the alternative-energy program at his former company, Exxon.) Now chairman of the National Petroleum Council, Raymond says that petroleum remains plentiful, and a new report he's prepared for the Bush administration argues for developing new sources of oil and gas. But the report also advocates moderating demand, especially by raising fuel efficiency in cars. As for global warming? Raymond, who is also chair of President Bush's alternative-energy committee, says, "No comment." He spoke to NEWSWEEK's Fareed Zakaria. Excerpts:

ZAKARIA: You've given the impression that you're somewhat skeptical about global warming. In the last year or two, have you changed your views?
RAYMOND: Frankly, if the conversation is going to be largely focused on global warming, that's not really where I'm going to go. The National Petroleum Council's study says, on the question of global warming, if policymakers conclude that actions should be taken, that would force, likely, a change in the energy mix and would force higher costs of energy.

How should we think about petroleum, in light of the two most common arguments—first, that it makes us dependent on politically unstable Middle Eastern countries, and, second, that it contributes to global warming?
The notion of energy independence in this country may sound attractive to Americans, because Americans tend to think they can divorce themselves from the rest of the world, but the United States can't be [truly] independent. We are part of the worldwide system. This notion that people have that "we're going to stop importing crude oil from Saudi Arabia"—facts are, [wherever you buy from] in effect you're still importing Saudi crude oil, because the Saudi crude oil is in the world pool.

But should the United States be trying to develop alternate technologies to reduce the overall global dependence on this one fuel and one region of the world?
Well, I don't have any problem with that, and in fact the study recommends that this country doesn't have any choice but to pursue all economically driven, market-driven sources of energy. That's what it says: do it all! So when someone says, "We shouldn't have coal; we should have nuclear," well, my answer to that is you need coal and you need nuclear.

Do you think the world is running out of oil?
As the study says, the world is not running out of the resource. The problem we're getting into is the question, can we develop it in a timely way, given the constraints we have on the political front, the economic front, and just the time it takes to get things done?

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