Q&A: ConocoPhillips’ chief talks about meeting the demand

Q: In the 1970s, conservation was a word that was thrown around a lot with people lined up at gas stations and the 55 mile-per-hour speed limit. What do you think changed? Why did people stop caring about conserving and efficiency?

A: Well, we’ve gone through over the decades, many decades, the cycles of the cost of energy. When we went through the 1973-74 time period, of course the price of energy increased, its availability became quite an issue in terms of how we were going to address the challenge of energy. Subsequent to that, the economic and the political situation developed such that we went through cycles where energy was very plentiful at quite a lower cost. The result is we relaxed on our emphasis on conservation. What’s different now, as we are in 2007, is we don’t see necessarily the cycles of the past. It could happen, but we see the demand for energy continues to increase with the population and the development of economies. Our question is: ‘Where is all the energy going to be coming from?’ It makes all the sense in the world to us to encourage conservation and more efficient use of energy because if we use less, that’s the same thing as adding supply. And if we use less energy, it certainly helps with respect to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions.



Q: You’re conducting town hall and community meetings on a 35-city tour. What kind of feedback are you getting?

A: Wherever we go in the United States, irrespective of views toward the price of energy or supply of energy, we are always courteously received. And the discussion is very robust, very genuine and very respectful. What we have seen is that obviously the American public is concerned about the cost of energy. But more and more, responses we see in the dialogue are to be sure we have security of energy