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Show Divestiture and agriculture Breaking up the larger oil companies in the U. S. would mean higher food and fuel prices, Jack Swenson, general manager of the Rocky Mountain Oil & Gas Ass'n., Denver, told the Utah Farm Bureau Federation Feder-ation at St. George, Utah. Swenson referred to a bill approved by the Judiciary Committee and now before the full Senate for action later this summer which says that the largest 18 oil companies must restrict themselves to one phase of the oil and gas business. A company could be active in exploration and production, transportation, refining, or marketing, but not more than one of these activities. The RMOGA executive said "the entire case for divestiture is founded on pure emotionalism and political opportunism." The disruptions caused by divestiture would affect not only farmers but the entire economy econ-omy through encreased costs for fuel and 1 food, Swenson noted. The oil and gas industry spokesman re- j minded those attending the Utah Farm Bureau Bu-reau Federation mid-year conference "petroleum "pe-troleum and agriculture are very deeply in- ! tertwined." Agricultural users consume 15 percent of all the energy used in the U. S., he said, and "every acre cultivated and ! harvested requires 22 gallons of petroleum ! products." , Swenson refuted the idea of concentra- ; tion in the petroleum industry. He said, "the oil industry is among the least con- centrated and surely the roost competitive of all major industries in this country." "Much of the criticism," he added, "comes from politicians who see attacks on business in general as good politics and attacks on oil as the best of all." The petroleum industry speaker said that despite the warnings inherent in the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo the U. S. still has no energy policy. "Or in fact," he commented, "we seem to have 535 of them on Capitol Hill every congressman has his own solution." "Meantime, lacking any sense of national na-tional purpose in the energy field, our im -ports from OPEC nations continue to increase in-crease to the point where in one recent week we actually imported more oil than we produced in this country." "That means," Swenson added, "that of those 22 gallons used on every harvested acre on America's farms, better than 9 gallons is coming from imports." According to the Denver oil executive, "We are today paying the price of that dependence de-pendence on foreign sources in terms of higher prices for products as well as for the export of jobs. This dependence is costing cost-ing us the equivalent of three jobs a day lost to American workers. And divestiture, breaking up the companies, will cost from 200,000 to 700,000 more jobs by the end of the second year after Congressional enactment, enact-ment, if it were to occur." |
