Gee Exxon, don’t let consumer outrage bother you, OK? I mean, all those people swearing at your logo as they fill up their cars and trucks shouldn’t mean a thing, right? After all, there’s nothing consumers can do about it. You have the drugs, and we need the drugs. Still, it would be nice if you at least put a semblance of PR shine on your drug pusher status.

At a recent presentation in NY, Exxon displayed a chart showing production staying at current levels through 2012. When Deutsche Bank oil analyst Paul Sankey raised his hand and asked why not raise production (as most manufacturers do when their product is in demand), what was the Exxon Chairman’s response? Here’s the answer and interpretation from this article at MSN:

“We don’t start with a volume target and then work backwards,” Tillerson explained. Instead, he said, his team examines the available investment opportunities, figures out what prices they’ll likely get for that output down the road and places its bets accordingly. “It really goes back to what is an acceptable investment return for us,” Tillerson said. In other words, producing more barrels just to ease prices for consumers is not part of the company’s calculations.

Now, I don’t expect corporate America to care about the difficulties of individual Americans, but we don’t have to put up with this kind of dysfunctional relationship either. Oil companies are certainly aware of the gathering storm. On Air America I recently heard their latest PR offensive, meant to reassure us about how healthy it actually was that one company recently generated the largest annual profit known to man on the backs of an increasingly squeezed middle class. It began, “who owns the oil companies? YOU DO! If you have a pension, a 401K, or other investments, chances are you’re reaping the benefits of oil company profits!” So why don’t I feel so much richer right now?