THE SENIOR MEN'S CLUB OF NEW CANAAN
Minutes of the Regular meeting of May 11, 2001
President Lee Hindenach opened the business meeting with 186 members present.
Current membership is 493 with 7 invitees and 17 on the waiting list.
Announcements: Ralph Didomenico requested Couth photos for the 2001 - 2002
Directory. Don Freud reported that Walter Martin is at Waveny Care Center.
Activities: Bowling and Bridge are ongoing. Tennis began May 14th.
Racquetball is alive and well.
Paddle tennis is finished for the season
Couth: Botanical Gardens is 5/22; Goodspeed Opera is 6/20. The Great Connecticut
Jazz Festival is July 28, and will be at the Guilford Fairgrounds.
A Bluefish family ball game is being scheduled for July. Checks are being
accepted for the Washington DC trip, Oct. 23-25. Cost will be $400 per person.
Only 50 members get to go. Therefore, First Paid - First Served!
Jester: John Berg told us that age and experience have
prolific benefits, and a redesign of the prostate location would be beneficial.
Also, night urination should be limited to two, one to get up and one to go.
Speaker: Vice President Ron Seger introduced Walter Bork who in turn introduced
guest speaker Lou Noto. Mr. Noto became Chairman and CEO of Mobile Corporation in 1994.
He was the architect of the merger between Mobile and Exxon leading to Exxon Mobile
Corporation. The brand names Mobile and Exxon will be maintained at the service
stations. The merger implementation proceeded with little difficulty. It resulted
in cost savings of $5B. The reduction of 20,000 employes was the most difficult
aspect of the merger. Mr. Noto described himself as one of the casualties. Longer term
benefits will include savings from oil exploration, synergy from cultural differences,
and the benefit to shareholders which would not have materialized without the merger.
Mr. Noto believes that we will see more mergers such as the in-process Chevron-Texaco
deal. Such mergers allow risk balancing through a portfolio of projects. He
emphasized that $17B in Exxon Mobile after tax profits was not an embarrassment to him
considering the $100B of investments. The cost of crude, no new refineries, inefficient
older refineries fewer refineries and 100 different types of gasoline sold in the USA
justifies today's high cost of fuels. He called the New York Times "a
Journal of the Democratic Party", and described California as having all the
problems first and hopes that President Bush will keep hands off. He was genuinely
concerned about politics derailing good sense. There is no smoking gun that will
free us from using petroleum products. Therefore, we need to be concerned about
sources of supply. The US produces 6M barrels of oil today, down from 9M 20 years
ago. Mr. Noto emphasized the need to engage all nations including Iran to solve the
energy problem. Nuclear power is definitely needed to supplement other current
energy sources. He said conservation counts and sighted the Toyota Insight and
the Honda Prius as promising hybrid cars. Also, the internal combustion engine
was very efficient and the electric car technology is dead. He was straight forward
in stating that New Canaanites will pay whatever the market will permit the oil
companies to charge for gasoline.
Stan Stanziale, Assistant Secretary