Ben Stein always has the right words for the moment. Here’s what he would say if he were testifying before Congress on behalf of evil Big Oil.

Here are a couple key paragraphs…

…”In a word, we cannot as a modern society or even a modestly industrial society live without oil and gas. That is, we do not supply a luxury or a narcotic. We supply a basic necessity of life, as basic as almost any commodity there is.
…
Not only is oil a vital commodity, but it’s supplied with extreme efficiency and without the slightest serious hint of price-fixing. We buy the raw material at a world market price, refine it, and sell it at a market price. This is not the days of the Rockefellers. No one is sitting in a smoke-filled room fixing the price at monopoly levels far above the cost of production.

When market forces move our way, we make money. When market forces move against us, or when political forces move against us, we lose money or make less money.
…
Finally, the oil business is a big business. For some of us, lately it has been a good business after many lean years. But we are not princes of heredity and blood. Anyone who wants to can go to work at an oil company. We have serious labor shortages and we welcome you.

More important, anyone who wants can buy stock in us can be an oil company owner. This business is open to anyone. If you think we make obscene profits, buy our stock. You’ll soon find that our profits are not only not obscene, but far from certain or predictable.”
…
In conclusion, we sell a vital product within the law, at prices determined in the open market. We insist upon our rights of free speech and due process, and we welcome any of our critics to become our owners. And we ask you to consider what just one day without the stuff we sell would be like before you damn us for all eternity.

We also ask that you ask yourselves whether it is us or our critics — the oil companies or the Sierra Club (of which I am a member) — that gets you where you need to go each day, powers your furnace when it’s cold, and cools your apartment when it’s hot.

We all want a future that works, and together we can have it. Or we can just yell at each other and accomplish nothing. Thank you.”

Read the whole thing. Liberals won’t like this much… too many facts, not enough emotion.