Oil companies: Pick your poison

Figuring out where to buy gas these days is more irritating than usual, and it's already pretty annoying. It began with BP. Back in 2005, BP was talking about investing $8 billion in clean-energy technology over 10 years. Sure, that's still a smidgeon of their profits, but at least they were tipping, unlike the rest of big oil.

Then, BP considered putting all its renewable energy programs on the auction block, invested $3 billion into the Canadian tar sands, started transferring solar jobs from Maryland to China and had an accident in a small body of water known as the Gulf of Mexico. This begged the question, Beyond Petroleum … to what? Beyond preposterous, I say.

Then, Chevron started coming out with deep, moving commercials about our obligation to future generations. I stopped there once or twice a few years ago — until I found out Chevron had a skirmish in the Ecuadorian Amazon for 26 years. This led to the illegal dumping of 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater (enough to fill Lebron James' new swimming pool) and 17 million gallons of crude oil. Needless to say, lots of cancer, gigantic international lawsuits — I can't get my gas from these guys!

Shell? Tar sands, leading the way on environmentally destructive shale oil — need I say more? Well, I thought I didn't, until I read they have extracted $600 billion in oil revenue from the Niger Delta and given them back 6,800 oil spills. They have been privy to the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for the last 50 years. Good grief.

Exxon Mobil? I suppose the Exxon Valdez accident was a while ago. They're sharing the Niger Delta with Shell. They keep showing Phil Mickelson in their commercials talking about helping children in school. They're also pretty famous for funding climate denial — I just read the other day they gave $1.5 million last year to organizations that campaign against controls on greenhouse gas emissions.

Where does that leave me? My environmental policy professor last semester said he goes with Sunoco. They do seem to have the fewest black marks of the bunch; the worst I could find was 192,000 gallons of oil dumped into a wildlife refuge. Sigh…

This is why, last week, when I needed to fill up my Corolla, I threw up my arms and pulled into an Exxon for the first time in several years. I mentioned this to a friend who proclaimed they don't buy at Exxon because they're "the worst of the bunch." I try hard not to judge people based on their personal habits through the eye of environmental stewardship, mainly because we're all sinners faced with terrible choices. The guy driving a Hummer could go home to a house half the size of yours; the vegetarian could have four kids while the meat-eater has one; I'm moving out of my parents' house that has solar panels on it to a coal-powered apartment close to the campus and Metro, cutting my driving by a lot. Probably a wash.

Ultimately, there isn't much of a choice, is there? Not yet, anyways. People should legitimately do the best they can in their personal lives with what they have to work with, but at the end of the day, political action is going to be what changes the playing field.

Now if only I could find a Sunoco.

Matt Dernoga graduated in May with a degree in government and politics. He can be reached at dernoga at umdbk dot com.