What in the Hell is Chevron Thinking?

Ok, I know what Chevron is thinking, but it still frustrates the hell out of me.

The oil and gas industry has made a decades-long habit of slitting its own throat in the political arena, a habit that was a pet peeve of mine while I worked in government affairs in the industry itself. This has long been especially true of the major integrated companies, but many independent producers have done the same as their GA professionals have tried to imitate their big brothers and sisters.

I’m talking, of course, about the habit of these companies - and some of their big trade associations - of throwing big money at the campaigns of politicians who hate their guts and want to drive them out of business. Sometimes you have to do it - like the time a company I worked for gave money to Harry Reid’s campaign to help grease the wheels for a major pipeline it was building across Nevada - but other times turn out to be huge unforced errors of judgment.

That’s what happened this week related to Chevron. It was revealed this week that the company not only recently contributed the maximum allowable amount - $39,200 - to the campaign of Democrat Xavier Becerra in the leadup to the June 2 jungle primary, but also poured no less than half a million dollars into a Becerra-supporting Super PAC.

Holy crap.