Exxon-Mobil: "Energy Independence a Myth"

[BrandonTO416]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...exxon_raymond_3

Exxon Head: Energy Independence Is a Myth

Tue Jun 8, 8:19 AM ET

By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The idea of American energy independence is a myth and the United States must maintain "constructive relationships" with oil-producing countries for its own prosperity, the head of petroleum giant Exxon Mobil Corp. said Monday night.

"We do not have the resource base to be energy independent," Exxon Mobil chairman Lee R. Raymond said in a speech in which he outlined some of what he called the "hard truths" about global energy markets.

Raymond, who runs the world's largest publicly traded oil company, said that while other countries, including Russia, will play a growing role in supplying oil to the world, the Middle East will remain the center of supply because it holds as much as half of the world's oil reserves.

"We simply cannot avoid significant reliance on oil and gas from the Middle East because the world's supply pool (of oil) is highly dependent upon the Middle East," Raymond said in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

The fact that the United States and the rest of the world will have to depend increasingly for its oil and also for natural gas from Middle East, "is not a matter of ideology or politics," he said. "It is simply inevitable."

Raymond scoffed at suggestions