Bush on oil profits: It’s the market

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – President Bush defended the huge profits of Exxon Mobil Corp. Wednesday, saying they are simply the result of the marketplace and that consumers socked with soaring energy costs should not expect price breaks.

Bush, a former Texas oilman, said of oil costs, “I think that basically the price is determined by the marketplace and that’s the way it should be.”

In an interview with the Associated Press, Bush also addressed oil’s future, offering a more ambitious hope than in his State of the Union speech for cutting imports from the volatile Mideast.

“I believe in a relatively quick period of time, within my lifetime, we’ll be able to reduce if not end dependence on Middle Eastern oil by this new technology” of converting corn, wood, grasses and other products into ethanol, he said.

In his address Tuesday night, Bush had set a goal of reducing the nation’s Mideast oil imports by 75 percent by 2025.

Early this week, Exxon reported record profits of $10.71 billion for the fourth quarter and $36.13 billion for the year – the largest of any U.S. company. While some politicians raised furious objections, Bush had a different reaction.

“There is a marketplace in American society,” he said.

“There’s also a responsibility for energy companies to continue to invest and improve the ways that the American people can get energy,” he said. “I would very much hope that Exxon would participate in the development of a pipeline out of Alaska, for example, in order to make sure there’s more natural gas available for families and small business owners so the economy will grow.”

Bush said his goal is to diversify away from a “a hydrocarbon society. I meant what I said last night, that America’s addiction to oil is bad for this country. In order to remain competitive we’ve got to use technology to diversify away from dependence upon oil.”

“I am told we are close to significant breakthroughs when it comes to the production of ethanol … and that within six years the development of technology will be able to produce energy on a competitive basis,” he said.