SOHIO Ruffled by Protest at Annual Meeting

Standard Oil of Ohio (SOHIO), 53%-owned by British Petroleum, made nearly $2 billion in profits last year, making it the sixth highest earner in the United States. Now consumers in SOHIO's home state are demanding that the company share some of those profits with them.

"Freeze SOHIO, not Ohio" - that's the slogan of a coalition of Ohio-based community organizations, elderly and religious people who crashed SOHIO's annual meeting in Cleveland on April 22.

With 90 protesters inside the ' meeting and 700 outside, the coalition succeeded in closing it down after about five minutes, during which time the chairman and chief executive officer of SOHIO, Alton Whitehouse, hurriedly went over official business.

The protesters had two demands: First, that SOHIO stop lobbying for the decontrol of natural gas, a move which would raise gas prices by 300%, according to the Neighborhood People in Action, one of the organizers of the demonstration.

Second, the groups want SOHIO to establish a $1 billion fund to cover weatherization and energy assistance for Ohio residents, whose energy needs are high, due to the cold winters in that state. In the industrial heartland of the U.S., Ohio has been hit hard by the recession, having a 12.5% unemployment rate, fifth highest in the country.

"We wanted either to force Whitehouse to negotiate with us, or to shut down the meeting," said George Barany, director of the Ohio Action Training Center, a statewide community organization that participated in the protest. The strategy was a "tremendous" success, Barany says. When Whitehouse, SOHIO's chairman, refused to allow the protesters time to speak, they began shouting and blowing through whistles. "We feel we backed them somewhat into a corner," says Barany.

"We were very, very much perturbed that the group of demonstrators was so completely vocal and disruptive that the meeting had to be adjourned," says Pitt Curtiss, SOHIO's director of public affairs. The protesters "destroyed the real purpose of the stockholder meeting."

The campaign against SOHIO did not end with the shareholder meeting. "A week later," says Barany, "Whitehouse was supposed to speak at the Beachwood Holiday Inn in Cleveland Heights" but cancelled after he heard there would be a protest. The groups plan to keep up these kinds of demonstrations. "We are trying to isolate him and the company in the community," Barany explains.