ABC anchor Charles Gibson attempted to represent the common man when he grilled Exxon-Mobile CEO Rex Tillerson. With profits close to $22 billion for the first half of the year alone, many feel "Big Oil" is gouging consumers.
But here are some numbers that put things in perspective:
So, who is getting rich here? Stockholders like the little old ladies in Florida? Or the recipients of "Big Government's" largesse?
Another way of looking at things that's been discussed around the net for a few weeks now:
Chuck Gibson and the common man need to understand that large corporations mean large numbers, even in profit. 8.5% net profit isn't all that much, but because sales are in the region of $400 billion the profit numbers seem excessive to the average Joe that thinks in terms of thousands of dollars per year when he runs his household. But Chucky should know better.
Now let's get to the scary stuff. Why did the world's biggest oil company fail to meet the second-quarter numbers that analysts predicted?
"They are not growing,'' said Philip Weiss, an analyst at Argus Research in New York who rates Exxon Mobil shares 'buy'' and owns none. "Production is becoming more and more of a concern. For these guys, access to reserves is a very big issue.''
Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson, 56, is spending $52 million a day to search for new fields after reserves fell in 2007 by the most in at least a decade. . . .
"If oil prices are going up $20 and $30 a barrel a quarter like they have been, it hides a lot of flaws,'' said Brian Gibbons, an analyst at New York-based CreditSights Inc. "The question on everyone's mind is, how do these guys expect to grow production given the restrictions on access to reserves?''
Tillerson, who succeeded Lee Raymond as CEO in January 2006, is facing increasing barriers to oil and gas exploration in Russia, Alaska and the South China Sea as governments limit access or raise the costs of tapping natural resources.
Price Impact
New York oil futures, which had never traded as high as $112 before the second quarter, surged to a record $143.67 in June.
Drill here. Drill now. Reduce prices now. Believe it.
Here’s a five-minute clip from C-Span of a speech by Representative Ted Poe (R-Texas) on the “energy bill”. You wouldn’t think that a man could heap this much scorn and derision on Congress in that short of time, but he does. It becomes evident in just in the first few seconds of his speech:
Congress passed an energy bill which should have been called the anti-American non-energy bill because it punishes Americans for using energy rather than finding new sources of affordable energy. But the bill does one thing, Madam Speaker, it controls the type of light bulbs that all Americans must use throughout our fruited plains.
He goes on to question the constitutional authority of Congress telling Americans what type of light bulb to use, he pulls out actual EPA regulations on the procedures to follow if a CFL bulb is broken (3 pages, single spaced) because they contain mercury, and even points out that all CFL bulbs are made in China.
Give Rep. Poe a listen, and then thank God for good old southern boys that will go to Washington and tell it like it is. If only there were more of them.
From American Thinker.
Congressional subsidies for ethanol production have driven up the cost of baked goods, from cakes to apple turnovers.
This, of course, is on top of driving up the price of Tequila, cost of milk, price (and availability) of beef, hogs, eggs (23% in a year!), chickens, beer, turkeys -- the list goes on and on.
In spite of the fact that ethanol blends lose every cost benefit analysis, and in spite of the fact that ethanol pollution rivals that of gasoline to the point that it will actually kill more people, Congress has shown no signs of reducing government subsidies for ethanol production, which is why prices continue the upward trend.
10 Year History of Ethanol Prices
Source and full-sized graph: California Energy Commission
Today's ethanol quote comes from Cornell University scientist David Pimental:
We're actually importing more oil to produce ethanol. It's not making us oil-independent, and it's costing us one hell of a lot of money.
In the future, ethanol will be made from wheat. What do you think this will do to the cost of living? And do you really think it will be any more cost effective than drilling the ANWR and creating jobs?
The government loves to give our tax dollars to a variety of people, but under arcane IRS rules only the first 60,000 hybrid cars from any given manufacturer are eligible for "full" tax credits for the buyers. Toyota hit that number a long time ago and Honda did so in January.
According to these complex rules, consumers can still qualify for 50% of the tax credit from Honda hybrids from January through June 30. Then it gets cut in half again until January of 2009, at which time it disappears altogether.
So if you want the full credit, buy a Ford (which is projected to hit the cap later this year) or you can go GM. Remember, a GMC Yukon hybrid gets 20 city/21 highway and a hybrid Chevy Tahoe gets a whopping 21 city/22 highway!
Oh wait, it turns out that the dollar amount for tax credits also changes "based on the fuel economy and weight of the model." Maybe those won't result in a big payoff after all.
Someone remind me, why don't we just drill in the ANWR and off the coast of Florida while we build a couple of nuclear power plants and abolish the IRS? Life would certainly end up simpler.
Source: US News
As oil prices spike upwards again, it is important to remember just how bad things got under the watchful eye of the president that Castro loves: Jimmy "the Peanut" Carter.
This chart is from the Chart of the Day, which notes:
One point of interest is that oil is trading near 26-year highs but still below the inflation-adjusted highs of 1980. It is also interesting to note that most oil price spikes were a result of Middle East crises and often preceded or coincided with a US recession.
Remember this next month when Carter comes out and endorses Edwards for president. Or will it be Hillary? No one can really predict what nonsense will next issue forth from Carter's mouth.
According to a recent online poll at Daily Fuel Economy Tip.com [via Digg], an astonishing 79% of respondents think that gas companies are manipulating gas prices to achieve record profits. While online polls like this are highly unreliable, I believe that it is indicative of the general population.
What is sad is that it is absolutely true that gas prices are being manipulated. By tree-huggers, Democrats and vote-seeking Republicans that are stopping us from drilling in the gulf and building refineries, and by over-regulation of an essential industry.
The free market, in this case, is not free.
And we pay for it with every mile that we drive.
Ethanol is being forced down the throat of American consumers as a feel-good alternative to foreign oil (God knows we can't drill in Alaska or the Gulf to get our own oil!) and as a Republican vote-buying tactic as they kowtow to the increasingly smaller farm delegation.
Ethanol:
Now there's one more thing: they think that it is so corrosive that destroys the pumps that we will use to stick it in our cars:
E85, a blend of 85 percent corn-based ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, could be eating away at metal and plastic parts in pumps being used to dispense the fuel at gasoline stations, Underwriters Laboratories, the private product-safety testing group, said this month.
BP, the British oil company, said on Thursday that it would delay the expansion of E85 at its American gasoline outlets until the laboratories certified an E85 dispensing system. “BP is tracking this issue very closely,” Valerie Corr, a company spokeswoman, said.
More corrosive than gasoline? It eats away at plastic and metal parts? And you want me to put this overpriced, underperforming syrup in my car?
If it wasn't for the War on Islamofacism, I'd say it was time for a good old-fashioned revolution.
7-Eleven has announced that it will no longer use Citgo as a gas supplier, severing a 20-year relationship:
7-Eleven officials said Wednesday that the decision was partly motivated by politics.
Citgo Petroleum Corp. is a Houston-based subsidiary of Venezuela's state-run oil company and 7-Eleven is worried that anti-American comments made by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez might prompt motorists to fill-up elsewhere.
I'm thinking, "Great! I'll drive miles out of my way just to go to a 7-Eleven."
And I'm thinking that 7-Eleven will become the Gas King of Middle America because there's a whole lot of people that would feel the same way.
But no, 7-Eleven was quick to put a knife through the heart of any perception that a business decision has anything to do with keeping Americans from funding anti-American regimes or protecting Americans from terrorist-friendly, hate-spewing madmen:
The company's decision appeared to represent a broadening of U.S.-Venezuela tensions, which previously had been little more than a war of words between Chavez and the Bush administration, but 7-Eleven spokeswoman Margaret Chabris told Reuters that was not the case.
The decision to drop Citgo, a subsidiary of Venezuelan national oil company PDVSA, was made well before the speech, she said, and based on 7-Eleven's desire to sell its own branded gasoline.
"People are making it out to be more than it is," Chabris said.
Further, 7-Eleven's official position is that Americans should keep funding anti-American socialist regimes:
The 7-Eleven statement said it was not calling for a boycott of Citgo, which employs 4,000 people in the United States, and supplies 14,000 US retailers.
"Americans with no substantive connection to Venezuela would be economically harmed by boycotts," the statement said.
In other words, 7-Eleven believes that a boycott that harms one thousandth of one percent of Americans is a bad thing. But giving millions billions of dollars every year to a nation that harbors Arab terrorists, openly declares support for Syria and cozies up to China is just fine.
I'll not be stopping at a 7-Eleven again. Ever.
A great summary of the Whys and Why Nots of the Kyoto Treaty from political entertainer Glenn Beck (5.3 MB download).
Or if you prefer, here it is hosted on YouTube (uploaded by Terror Free Oil). But my copy doesn't have the annoying headline scroll at the bottom of the screen.
Pictured is a roadster prototype from the first auto company to come out of Silicon Valley, Tesla Motors.This baby does 0 to 60 in about four seconds. For comparison's sake, a Lotus Elise "zips" from 0 to 60 in 4.9 seconds and Porsche's latest 911 Turbo rips from zero to 60 mph in just 3.4 seconds.
What's more, the darn thing runs on laptop batteries. You heard me: 6,831 rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.
Check out the journalist's experience:
He releases the brake and my head snaps back. One-one-thousand: I get a floating feeling, like going over the falls in a roller coaster. Two-one-thousand: The world tunnels, the trees blur. Three-one-thousand: We hit 60 miles per hour. Eberhard brakes. We're at a standstill again -- elapsed time, nine seconds.The vehicle gets 250 miles to a charge (although judging from my experience with laptop batteries, that will fall off after a few months and in a couple of years you'll be lucky to get to the other side of town and back) and takes three and a half hours to recharge using a 240 volt outlet (you can charge it using a standard 110, but that takes longer).
This model is almost ready for mass production but will cost a whopping $80,000 or more. But the company is already working on a lower-cost sedan that may be out as soon as 2008. And remember, the motor has only one moving part: the rotor. No spark plugs, timing belts, turbochargers, or catalytic converters to keep maintained. Even the transmission is simpler: only two forward gears (first gear takes you up to 70 mph and to go into reverse the motor just runs backwards, which theoretically means you could hit top speed of 130 in reverse!). So I don't imagine this puppy will be spending much time in the shop (except to replace those batteries).
This is yet another example of why we don't need the government investing wasting taxpayer dollars on alternate energy research. When the market creates a demand, American innovation will step up to the plate.
I hope this pans out. It would be nice to drive a car that sounds like "a jet preparing for takeoff 5 miles away".
[HT to Instapundit via non-blogging Advised by Wolves]
Update: Future Pundit notes:
Tesla's Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list claims the batteries will last for 500 recharging cycles. In theory that gives 100,000 miles before replacement. In practice you might get less since most people aren't going to want to run their batteries all the way down and therefore will charge up less than every 250 miles. ...But if you are interested in this kind of thing, I highly recommend Slashdot's article, Electric Cars and Their Discontents, which begins:What I'd like to know: First, how much do the batteries cost? Second, how quickly will the battery costs drop? Third, how quickly will the energy density go up for lithium-based batteries?
The most hotly contested issue raised by yesterday's post about the lithium-ion battery-powered Tesla roadster is only tangentially related to the car itself; instead, it's the energy generation and storage required for electric cars more generally to operate. Read on for the Backslash summary of the conversation, including several of the comments that defined the conversation.
Technorati Tags: Electric Vehicles.
Cuba is exploring in its half of the 90-mile-wide Straits of Florida within the internationally recognized boundary as well as in deep-water areas of the Gulf of Mexico. The impoverished communist nation is eager to receive any economic boost that would come from a major oil find.A point that I've made before."They think there's a lot of oil out there. We'll see," said Fadi Kabboul, a Venezuelan energy minister. He noted that the oil fields Cuba is plumbing do not respect national borders. Any oil Cuba finds and extracts could siphon off fuel that otherwise would be available to drillers off the Florida coast and oil-thirsty Americans.
Where is the competition coming from? From the same article:
As I've said before, exploring for and extracting oil is not a danger to the environment. Spills occur during transport: tankers go aground or pipelines burst. Oil is rarely spilled during exploration and production and when it is, usually less than one barrel is lost.
Every time a tree-hugging hippie tells you that they are against drilling in America because they want to protect the environment, ask them to tell you the last time that drilling caused an environmental problem. And every time a politician tells you that we need to protect our coasts from American oil, call him a liar.
Technorati Tags: Energy, Energy Policy, Gas Prices, Crude Oil Prices, Gas Tax, Cuba, China, Environment, EPA, Energy, Energy Policy, Gas Prices, Crude Oil Prices, Taxes, Environment, Environment Protection Agency, EPA, Partisan Politics, Oil & Gas Industry, Drilling for Oil, Gulf Drilling, Gulf of Mexico, Oil Platforms, Reasons to Slap a Hippy. Hippies Suck.
Mr. Kerekes of NEI agrees the future looks bright for nuclear power.Count me among the 76%. Heck, I'd work in one."We have 103 nuclear reactors operating in the United States, which represent 2,500 combined reactor years. So we have compiled quite a lot of experience." ...
A national survey last summer confirmed that Americans view nuclear energy favorably. In a poll of adults living within 10 miles of a nuclear power plant, 83 percent said they favor nuclear energy, and 85 percent gave the plant near them a "high" safety rating. Seventy-six percent said they would be willing to see a new reactor built on the site near their home.
Now if only we can get congress to quit mucking around and over-regulating things, maybe we'll get some clean energy.
Technorati Tags: Nuclear Energy, Energy Policy, Environment, Hippies Suck.
With prices hovering around $70 a barrel, that means that our elected servants are keeping U.S. companies from developing over eleven trillion dollars worth of resources. That's 11 trillion of income that won't get taxed, billions of hours of jobs for everything from roughnecks to accountants, not to mention ancillary industries that do everything from making drill bits to supplying paper forms to ferrying workers to and from remote sites.
Eleven trillion dollars that won't feed our economy. Eleven trillion dollars that will probably go even higher as China feeds its voracious appetite for oil, reducing supply and driving prices ever upward.
Eleven trillion dollars that we won't exploit because we don't trust home industries with our environment, even though Mexico, Cuba and even China is drilling off our coasts.
Truth is, spills occur during transport: tankers go aground or pipelines burst. Oil is rarely spilled during exploration and production and when it is, usually less than one barrel is lost.
And remember that not one drop of oil was spilled during the devastation of Katrina, even with incidents like a sunk platform and an oil rig that was ripped from its moorings and thrown downriver to be smashed against a suspension rig.
So the next time a tree-hugging hippie tells you that they are against drilling in America because they want to protect the environment, ask them to tell you the last time that drilling caused an environmental problem. And the next time a politician tells you that we need to protect our coasts from American oil, you can can him a liar.
Oh yeah, and what about natural gas? Over 275 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered reserves at over $6/MMBtu (because the price has dropped), comes out to another 1.6 trillion dollars. And a whole lot of energy.
Technorati Tags: Energy, Energy Policy, Gas Prices, Crude Oil Prices, Taxes, Environment, Environment Protection Agency, EPA, Partisan Politics, Oil & Gas Industry, John+Kerry, Drilling for Oil, Gulf Drilling, Gulf of Mexico, Oil Platforms, Hippies Suck.
U.S. Senate Democrats on Wednesday offered a plan to cut U.S. oil import dependence 40 percent by 2020 by requiring more use of alternative motor vehicle fuels like ethanol.Of course! With China teaming with Cuba to pump the oil out of gulf fields just 50 miles off our coast, and with Mexico already producing from rich finds in the waters they share with Texas, the Dem answer is to grow our oil. Never mind taking what God has given us in the gulf. Never mind building a jobs boom in the economically depressed regions populated by hungry eskimos. Never mind using proven technologies like nuclear reactors.
No, we should run our cars on moonshine!
Of course, the drive for biofuels in Europe is destroying rain forests. But who needs them? I've never been to one and if I need to see a monkey I'll go to Washington. It's closer and their antics are more bizaar and thus more entertaining.
Of course, consumers get between 25 and 40 percent fewer miles per gallon when gasoline is diluted with ethanol, so one wonders how many miles per gallon a car burning pure biodiesel would get. But hey, so what if you have to stop at the pump on the way to work . . . every day. The farmers will be happy!
Of course, ehtanol can't be shipped by pipeline so it has to be trucked in (or "rail roaded" or "barged"). Hmmm, I wonder . . . just how much ethanol would a truck carrying ethanol would burn if it had to go from the farms of mid-America to the highly populated (and highly fuel consuming) coastal cities in California and New York? Especially given that whole "miles per gallon" hit it would take burning corn oil. And so, just how much would the biodiesel end up costing once a few drops out of the tank truck made it out there? But so what? Maybe those bastards will bike to work instead of queueing up at the pump to pay through the nose for soy oil, thus saving us all a lot of work.
Of course, it takes more energy to produce biodiesel and ethanol than they create. But I'm sure Dems will come up with a plan. Maybe we'll use coal to refine ethanol so we can drive little Suzy to school.
Of course, our farmers can't keep up with current demands for ethanol and all we want to do is blend a little with gasoline. Never mind the preposterous 54 cents per gallon tariff that is imposed on imported ethanol, which is just one of the reasons we are paying artifically inflated prices for gas to begin with.
Yes, using an energy-deficient biodiesel that we can't produce in sufficient quantities to meet current demands and can't efficiently distribute to consumers has just got to be the answer!
With plans like this, it is stunning that Dems lost the House, the Senate and the White House.
Technorati Tags: Energy, Energy Policy, Gas Prices, Environment, Democrat Antics.
Yet sure enough, by dinner U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) had announced a wide-ranging investigation into price gouging by shoe designers, shoe stores and shoe leather producers, domestic, foreign and terrorist.Read it all. Hilarious!"Who is this Choo, anyway, and how much did he pay himself last year," Schumer snarled. "No one can tell me this leopard print is worth anywhere near $700. It's a slingback and doesn't even have laces. I'm going to drop the other Rockport on this, and if President Bush is involved, well, that's what Impeachment is for. We all know who is to blame for this outrage."
Technorati Tags: Humor, Windfall Taxes, Democrat Antics.
Over the last seven weeks, the average US price for a gallon of unleaded has shot up 52 cents per gallon. When adjusted for inflation, gasoline prices are not far off the inflation-adjusted peak of $3.18 that occurred back in 1981.The difference, of course, it that the last time gas spiked this high it was because OPEC was squeezing us by the cajones, limiting supply. There were gas lines around the block and you hoped that you got your tank filled before the station ran dry.
This time, it's because we can't devise a decent energy policy that allows us to drill in Alaska or the Gulf (although Mexico is having all kinds of luck there) nor build a new refinery on American soil.
When gas prices are high, consumers actually pay attention to politics. So when gas prices spiked last September, I called for Bill Frist to show some leadership and ram some highly visible energy legislation through the Senate (the House won't be a problem). I repeat my plea:
The first federal moter fuels tax was initially set at 1.5 cents per gallon in 1950 and has risen steadily to the current rate of 18.4 cents per gallon (24.4 cents for diesel). While the elimination of this won't do much for a gallon of gas costing four dollars or more, the federal government imposes 43 different direct and indirect taxes on the production and distribution of gasoline.
The American economy has been growing while Europe's sputters. A contributing factor is the price of energy (Norway is predicting prices at the pump of $8.84/gal). High energy and transportation costs will certainly slow economic growth. Consumers are having to tighten their belts, and so should the government!
It is possible that some states would even follow suit, as measures are stalled in Colorado and Rhode Island. State taxes add an average of 27.5 cents per gallon and many counties and cities add taxes of their own.
This, of course, is merely a temporary stopgap designed to ease the burden on consumers while more comprehensive measures take effect.
The last new refinery built in this country was in 1976. (We would have had another one in Virginia but after nine years of court battles brought by environmentalists and local residents and an equally wearying nine years of facing state and federal regulators, the company just gave up.)
Worse yet, over half of the existing refineries have closed down over those twenty five years (308 in 1979 to 146 today) due to the prohibitive costs of meeting ever-more-stringent government regulations. This trend is expected to continue, especially among the smaller facilities.
Our refineries are old, inefficient and possibly dangerous. They are certainly running at near-capacity (although total U.S. crude oil processing capacity peaked at 18.6 million barrels a day in 1981, it is estimated that our refineries are running at 90 to 95% capacity). The situation has worsened as some refineries knocked out by Katrina are still not operating.
With the decrease in competition and soaring demand, the existing refineries are making a killing. It takes a two to four billion dollar investment to build a new refinery, but with profits up it shouldn't be hard to encourage new construction.
Then maybe we can keep up with Canada, Thailand, China, India, Kuwait, Nigeria, and Iran — all of which are expanding crude oil processing capacity.
State and federal regulations force manufacturers to produce over 40 different fuel blends (boutique fuels), with different blends required between summer and winter. The burdonsome need to meet custom fuel specifications has cost consumers $47 billion over the last ten years and made it impossible to meet supply demands with excesses in other parts of the country.
Some refineries overseas have stopped shipping gasoline to the United States because they don't want the headache of changing processes nor risk getting stuck with excess supplies when out of season.
Create one formulation for the entire nation and stick to it.
The Environmental Protection Agency has made a considerable difference in the stewardship of our natural resources but it has come at a high cost. Since its inception in 1970, the EPA has issued a steady stream of confusing regulations that represents one-third of all federal laws and regulations. In the first two decades alone, EPA regulations cost American taxpayers and businesses $1.4 trillion, with over $1.6 trillion in the 1990s. And that doesn't count the hidden costs to American consumers in the form of higher prices and fewer choices.
EPA Clean Air regulations are costly (more here), flawed (more here), politically motivated (more here) and arguably hurt our poor and minority population more than any other segment.
The EPA itself routinely overreaches its authority. Now that President Bush has proven that our environment can continue to improve even after business-friendly reforms have been put into place, it is time to slap the EPA down and make a stand for the American consumer.
Clean air and a healthy environment at a resonable cost. The EPA would have us pay any cost, even when it doesn't make sense.
Hey Charlie, I got news for ya. When you stifle competition through over regulation, this is what happens. Fix the problem, not the symptom.
Technorati Tags: Energy, Energy Policy, Gas Prices, Crude Oil Prices, Gas Tax, Taxes, Environment, Environment Protection Agency, EPA, Refinery Capacity, Charles Schumer.
Edwards begins by hitting the talking point: Bush and Cheney are "in the pockets of the oil and gas industry." Then:
The New York Times broke the story that the Administration will allow big energy companies to pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territories over the next five years without paying any royalties to the taxpayers.This is absolutely true. But:
My mind is reeling with all the people who could be helped with the seven billion dollars that Bush and Cheney are handing over to the oil and gas companies.But what did the NY Times article actually say (requires registration)?In the President's State of the Union address, he told us that America is addicted to oil. What he didn't admit was his role in bloating the pushers' profits.
Administration officials say that the benefits are dictated by laws and regulations that date back to 1996, when energy prices were relatively low and Congress wanted to encourage more exploration and drilling in the high-cost, high-risk deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.Deep drilling for oil and gas even in shallow waters takes years and a massive capital investment. Congress tried to encourage oil companies to make that investment with royalty exemptions for a limited time. Clinton saw it wasn't working and bumped the ante. Guess what? It worked!"We need to remember the primary reason that incentives are given," said Johnnie M. Burton, director of the federal Minerals Management Service. "It's not to make more money, necessarily. It's to make more oil, more gas, because production of fuel for our nation is essential to our economy and essential to our people."
But what seemed like modest incentives 10 years ago have ballooned to levels that have alarmed even ardent supporters of the oil and gas industry, partly because of added sweeteners approved during the Clinton administration but also because of ambiguities in the law that energy companies have successfully exploited in court.
About one-quarter of all oil and gas produced in the United States comes from federal lands and federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico.And now everyone is crying foul. Yet this is really a bipartisan success story.
You see, while Edwards is throwing out false accusations as to the current administration's role in the royalty exemptions, he never admits to his party's complicity:
So why is the amount of royalty-free gas and oil expected to double over the next five years?There it is, straight from the Left's paper of record. Clinton is the one who appears to be (quoting Edwards' accusations) "in the pockets of the oil and gas industry."The biggest reason is that the Clinton administration, apparently worried about the continued lack of interest in new drilling, waived the price triggers for all leases awarded in 1998 and 1999.
In fact, congress is still at it and, in spite of what John Edwards says, the Bush-Cheney administration actually opposed additional provisions for royalty relief:
Administration officials say the issue is out of their hands, adding that they opposed provisions in last year's energy bill that added new royalty relief for deep drilling in shallow waters."We did not think we needed any more legislation, because we already have incentives, but we obviously did not prevail," said Ms. Burton, director of the Minerals Management Service.
But the Bush administration did not put up a big fight. It strongly supported the overall energy bill, and merely noted its opposition to additional royalty relief in its official statement on the bill.
Democrat ex-presidential candidate John Kerry voted for the exemptions and is now complaining about it. That's the problem with government subsidies — they never seem to go away.Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said he planned to introduce a resolution putting the Senate on record against the royalty break. ''No one in their right mind think oil companies turning record high profits and squeezing Americans at the pump should now get to keep $7 billion,'' Kerry said.
Although Kerry was among those who voted for the royalty relief in 1995, his spokeswoman said that the relief is no longer needed when oil prices are near $60 a barrel.
And even the NY Times admits that Democrats are not the only ones concerned about this issue:
Republicans also have expressed second thoughts about the royalty relief. Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., chairman of the House Resources Committee, told the Times: ''I don't think there's a single member of Congress who thinks you should get royalty relief at $70 a barrel.''Not a single member of congress. Bipartisan support for subsidies. Bipartisan opposition to subsidies. Who says there's gridlock in Washington?
In fact, according to a NY Times article published today, Republican Representative Richard W. Pombo, the chairman of the House Resources Committee, is demanding Clinton-era "memos, correspondence and data on the program and on the negotiations over the law that created it in 1996." Hmmm, remember the Democrats demanding the same materials from the White House after the administration had formulated its energy policy? Open government for all.
[Hat tip to non-blogging The Big Kahoona for the story.]
Technorati Tags: Royalty Relief, Democrat Lies, John Edwards, Edwards' Lies, Energy Policy, Partisan Politics, Oil & Gas Industry, Royalty Exemptions, Oil and Gas Royalty Exemptions, John+Kerry, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Bill Clinton, Drilling for Oil, Gulf Drilling, Gulf of Mexico, Oil Platforms.
I gotta get me a cheaper caffeine habit.
The drive for "green energy" in the developed world is having the perverse effect of encouraging the destruction of tropical rainforests. From the orang-utan reserves of Borneo to the Brazilian Amazon, virgin forest is being razed to grow palm oil and soybeans to fuel cars and power stations in Europe and North America. And surging prices are likely to accelerate the destruction.The rush to make energy from veg
