Oil Companies Voting With Their Feet

IBD Editorials ^ | December 12, 2008

[Kaslin]

Energy: Another day, another oil company fleeing the country. No, this isn't Ecuador, the banana republic that just defaulted on its debt after chasing out investors. It's the United States, and what we're seeing is self-defense.

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Much political hay has been made in Congress about "unpatriotic" corporations that move operations abroad. Weatherford International is the latest, taking its headquarters from Houston to Switzerland. The oil services company said that it wants to be closer to its markets. But what it really meant was that it no longer saw the future in the U.S.

In a political atmosphere of blaming corporations, it's no wonder. Halliburton fled to Dubai in 2007. Tyco International, Foster Wheeler and Transocean International all went to Switzerland. As a pattern emerges, America's global standing diminishes, in part because it's based on the willingness of companies to invest. It's an especially bad sign when domestic companies flee.

"The U.S. is an important market," Weatherford CEO Bernard J. Duroc-Danner told the Houston Chronicle Thursday. But, "it's just a market. It's not the primary market."

How does that sound for a loss of global leadership? If that's not clear enough, try this: "In the hierarchical pecking order, (Houston's) not going to be Rome anymore."

What accounts for this vote of no confidence in the U.S.?

Start with the demonization of oil companies. Executives have been hauled before Congressional star chambers, held up to abuse and ridicule, and then blamed for high oil prices as if they wanted to kill their markets. Rising global demand, nationalizations and Congress' failure to open the country to drilling go ignored.

[Kitten Festival]

I agree. They owe their call on this to their shareholders, it’s their job to make a profit.

[Gritty]

I see the bourgeois wreckers and greedy capitalist bloodsuckers are fleeing from the righteous Dictatorship Of The Proletariat and our new 5 Year Plan.

Not to worry, Comrades. Soon, they will have no place to run and will then meet their just desserts in The Camps where they will be rewarded by The People for their heinous crimes against humanity!

They can run, but they can't hide from proletariat justice...