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To some extent, Exxon seems to have followed the same arm's length pol icy in the U.S., a fact for which executives can be grateful in the current cli mate of deep suspicion. Three oil companies -Gulf, Ashland and Phillips Petroleum -have admitted making illegal contributions of corporate funds to the 1972 Nixon re-election campaign. Exxon was asked for a similar contribution and refused. An aide says that Jamieson abruptly dismissed G.O.P. Fund Raiser Maurice Stans from his office.
These policies have kept Exxon remarkably free of scandal during the present shortages. Italian newspapers are rilled with allegations that oil companies have held back supplies and bribed government officials to get price increases. No such charges have been hurled against Exxon's Esso Italiana. In New York the regional Federal Energy Office said last week that five oil companies-but not Exxon-in January had cut off or reduced gasoline deliveries to some stations in an effort to eliminate marginal operations; it ordered the companics to restore deliveries. The worst that may be said about Exxon is that it raised wholesale gasoline prices 3%0 a gal., while Amoco cut them 20-but then, Amoco's price had earlier been one of the highest in the region, and Exxon's price, about 7%0 less, had been the lowest among the majors.
Nasty Surprise. Certainly Exxon has made mistakes. Though its officials saw the oil shortage coming and tried to raise the alarm, Jamieson concedes that the speed and severity with which the scarcity hit last year took them by surprise. His explanation: Exxon planners underestimated how rapidly world demand for energy would grow, and made too optimistic forecasts of how quickly coal production would increase and nuclear power develop to take the pressure off oil.
Once the crisis did burst, some oilmen began talking black gloom. German government officials, for example, say that after the Arab oil cutbacks started, Exxon and other companies warned them that imports might fall as much as 25% short of demand. European governments then took a more pro-Arab political stance than they might have if they had been less frightened. But Exxon Vice President Peyton reminds critics that the Arab countries initially reduced production by 25% below September 1973 levels, and vowed to cut a further 5% each month until Israel withdrew from territories occupied during the 1967 war. Exxon, he says, had to assume that the Arabs meant it and prepare for the worst.
The Arabs have canceled some of the early cutbacks, so that their production is running 15% below last September's pace. Iran, Indonesia, Nigeria and other countries have increased output, and world demand has been held down by surprisingly effective conservation and a relatively mild U.S. winter. Peyton estimates that world oil output is running 7% below the level of demand that existed before the crisis-a manageable shortfall, but one that still requires strict conservation.
Farther back, Exxon can be faulted for its support of oil import quotas, which kept a wall around the U.S. market between 1959 and early 1973. Indeed, when a Cabinet-level task force in 1969 was readying a proposal to dump the quotas, Michael Haider, then Exxon's recently retired chairman, arranged a private meeting with