Williams CEO Keith Bailey thinks his company has the best ofboth worlds: a 90-year-plus energy heritage that keeps its approachto communications “firmly footed in the direct, no-nonsense style”of its founders, coupled with a e-business edge that keeps it”young thinking.” However, as important as e-business is, Baileysaid there are two other “E’s” as important: energy and education.

Speaking at Cambridge Energy Research Associates’ CERAWeek 2001meeting last week in Houston, Bailey said, “Williams has come tothe point of view that the most important issues facing our companyand our society can generally be found in two areas of oureconomy.education and energy. They are the real ‘E’s’ of thee-business world.”

Noting that the U.S. is moving from an industrial-based economyto a knowledge-based economy, he said future growth is “absolutelydependent on its intellectual capital for success.” Pointing to theenergy crisis in California, Bailey said the knowledge-basedeconomy “still depends on the oil patch and the power plant.”

Energy growth is dependent on a strong educational system andwithout it, Bailey said the consequences would be tragic. “We arenot yet at the point of no return, but the edge of the cliff iscertainly in sight.”

As a member of President George W. Bush’s transition team,Bailey said that he has begun to see a “ray of hope” for the firsttime in several years regarding the U.S. educational system.Pointing to investments Williams has made with educationalscholarships “along some of our pipelines in the Rockies, theMidwest and Texas,” he encouraged other energy companies to alsoput education on the agenda by adopting schools and supporting bondissues.

Bailey also was quick to dispel the”popular myth” about thedecline of the energy business. “The real irony is that we’re morerelevant than ever. Our ‘demise’ has given the nation a realitycheck about energy supplies and given the industry a sounding boardto talk about our future.”

The new economy, said Bailey, is dependent on the capabilitiesand output from the “old economy” and energy companies’ role aspart of the old economy. New technology and the creation of thedevices that drive those applications now consume some 11% to 13%of the power in the United States, he said.

With an energy drain from new appliances, Bailey called for”more wells, more open mines.more refineries, more generatingstations and more pipelines,” on a larger scale than ever before.That large scale will happen, he said, once the regulatory barriersare lifted — something he expects to see under the Bushadministration.

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