Bad Ads

The American Petroleum Institute (API), a lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, continues to spend really big bucks on television ads.  Like many commercials, they try to "pretty up" the reality of what they do: sow's ear, silk purse.

One common API pitch is for the oil industry's remote-location drilling, by which they mean one platform can now handle drilling in multiple, widely separated locations.  For the API, this means "more of the oil and gas we need, from less than meets the eye."  The public, presumably, will like the idea of fewer visible, above-the-surface rigs.  That's a selling point, maybe, but a pretty weak one.  "out of sight, out of mind" isn't a bad motto -- lumber companies have used it to good advantage, leaving a thin row of forest along miles and miles of roadside, screening the acres and acres of clear-cut. 

The truth is that the remote-location technique serves the industry, reducing the costs of setting up large, permanent platforms over each hole in the sea bottom.  It may also represent somewhat less danger to shipping, though that could be outweighed by what must certainly be much greater danger to the sea floor and marine life. 

In another frequently aired ad, API, using an alias, presents those "average-looking" people who surprisingly have lengthy, articulate ideas about how bad increased taxes on oil and gas would be for them.  It's as if Yogi Berra suddenly delivered an eloquent speech on the history of the Dead Sea Scrolls, or George W. Bush were to speak intelligibly about anything. 

Personally, I can only applaud the selflessness, the pure civic-mindedness of the American Petroleum Institute, spending millions on prime-time commercials just to warn people about a threat to their pocketbooks.  I can't think of any other reason they'd do it...can you? 

After all, there is some honesty here: without a doubt, any taxes imposed on oil and gas companies are ultimately going to be paid by the consumer.  And if petroleum-based energy should happen to retain an artificial market edge vis-a-vis competing forms of energy, just because efforts to impose new taxes were thwarted, no one at API is likely to complain.

Comments

[Supra Footwear]

I just got off the phone for something unrelated and we were talking about the self-service revolution in the workplace, How can a customer care rep comments on a restructure or capital raising?
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