Calgary Herald | January 09, 2009

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.