Posted on 02/27/2008 6:08:34 AM PST by Brilliant
With oil prices reaching new highs, House Democrats are taking aim at the oil industry ...in an effort to tap voter frustration over gasoline prices and oil-company profits.
...the House of Representatives is expected to approve a measure that would eliminate roughly $18 billion in tax incentives for oil and gas companies, and use the savings to fund tax credits and other incentives for renewable energy...
The measure comes as high energy prices put increased pressure on consumers. Oil yesterday finished at a new high of $100.88 a barrel in New York futures markets, putting it $2.88 below the inflation-adjusted high reached in April 1980. The average price of a regular gallon of gas this week was $3.13 a gallon, up about 75 cents from a year earlier...
Senate Democrats also held a hearing yesterday to put new pressure on the administration to take a tougher line against the industry in a dispute over royalties... Assistant Secretary of the Interior Stephen Allred told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that as much as $31 billion is at stake in the dispute, which centers on leases issued to oil and gas companies for the right to drill in the Gulf of Mexico from 1996 to 2000.
Industry groups counter that the tax incentives help stimulate oil-field investment, add new supplies to the market and keep jobs in the U.S. "These tax increases seem particularly egregious at a time when we are trying to stimulate the U.S. economy..." said Mark Kibbe, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute...
The industry also argues it was adhering to U.S. royalty-rate policy in the late 1990s, when royalties were reduced to stimulate domestic drilling...
Congressional Democrats have also sought to slow down an administration plan to allow oil-and-gas drilling...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Dang, you’re ignorant, but you sure do have opinions.
If you think oil companies set oil prices, then tell me what those boys on the floor of the NYMEX are doing everyday.
It’s called the free market. Why doesn’t bacon sell for $10 a strip if ranchers set the price?
Here’s a hint: Because they don’t and they can’t.
Sorry you hate business so much. Perhaps if you actually learned something about it, you’d make better posts.
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