January 11, 2009

Exxon supports carbon tax

Herald News Services

Exxonmobil corp., the world's largest crude oil refiner, supports taxing carbon dioxide as the most efficient way of curbing greenhouse gas emissions, its chief executive said.

"As a businessman, it's hard to speak favourably about any new tax, but a carbon tax strikes me as a more direct, more transparent and more effective approach," Rex Tillerson, CEO of the Irving, Texas based company, said Thursday at the Woodrow Wilson international center for scholars in Washington.

At a Dec. 11 event in Chicago, Tillerson, 56, said he preferred a carbon tax to carbon trading programs such as the type used in Europe.

A trading program, known as 'cap and trade,' "inevitably introduces unnecessary cost and complexity" that reduces effectiveness, said Tillerson. They require a vast expansion of regulation, he said. a carbon tax "can be more easily implemented" and is the "most efficient means of reflecting the cost of carbon," said Tillerson.

"Such a tax should be made revenue neutral," he said, which requires other taxes to be lowered so that the overall tax burden isn't increased.

© The Calgary Herald 2009

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