Valero Offers Politics at Gas Pumps

Valero Energy, the largest gasoline producer in North America, is now dispensing a policy position with its petroleum.

Gas stations that sell Valero gasoline are displaying signs at the pumps, picturing Uncle Sam with this warning: "If Congress passes Cap & Trade Legislation, you will pay the price."

The signs continue, "Cap and Trade will cost you 77-cents or more a gallon." They direct consumers to a Valero website opposing a bill intended to limit greenhouse gases.

"It's definitely unprecedented for Valero," said company spokesman Bill Day. "We've never done something like this before. But this particular issue is so important and this particular piece of legislation is so demonstratably bad that we did take the lead on this."

Day says the bill pending before Congress holds refiners solely responsible for their product's carbon footprint.

"So when you and I and everybody else drives their car, the manufacturer of the fuel in that car is the one responsible for the carbon emissions, not the owner of the car, not the driver."

Valero estimates the company could be on the hook for $6 billion in carbon allowances every year, which is more than the company made in its most profitable year.

But environmentalists scoff at this argument.

"They're not worried about this cost to their business," said Matthew Tejada, executive director of GHASP (Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention).

"They're worried about the fact that they know they're going to pass that (cost) on to the consumer and that's going to drive the consumer even more quickly to get away from oil."

Tejada takes umbrage at Valero's claim that Cap and Trade legislation would make "no measurable improvement on global climate change," as stated on the website.

"If somebody doesn't want Cap and Trade and they aren't offering a more viable solution," said Tejada, "what they're really saying is 'we don't want to deal with greenhouse gases, we don't want to deal with global warming.'"