U.S. Has Royalty Plan to Give Windfall to Oil Companies

Now why did I want to get into international development and not the oil and gas industry?

Oh yeah. Because I'm an idiot.

 

So now the US is just giving their oil away to oil companies? That makes sense. It's not like we have a deficit or a declining infrastructure.

 

"Short of imposing new taxes on the industry, there may be little Congress can do to reverse its earlier giveaways."

Somebody edumacate me: If Congress can pass a law, why can't it un-pass the law? Or, at least, amend it?

I sit back in my corner and grumble about sunset provisions. Times change and needs change. Seems to me laws can change, as well.

tristan, note the 1996 date, for that law. Anybody remember what was the price, in the year or two it took to get the bill through Congress? Around the low $20s or so? I remember Clinton and OPEC agreeing that in the vicinity of $25/bbl was reasonable for both buyers and sellers.

'Rat

 

I don't know - those seem pretty synonomous in many parts of the world...

 

Exactly, it's a pay for play system in Washington and the oil business pays better than most. Recall a couple weeks ago we had a thread on a Bush budget proposal to reduce some of these oil industry subsidies, to which the industry was already voicing objections. I think we all concluded that the chances of these subsidy reductions making it through the budget process was essentially zero to none.

 

The thing that offends me is that our organised bribery system known as lobbying is so damed affordable that a company would be irresponsible not to exploit it.

Let's say my company is one of these getting billions of dollars of federal oil (our oil) free of charge, let's say it's $5 billion worth. I'd be betraying my shareholders if I didn't spend a pittance of, say, $500,000 in combined soft and hard contributions it took to guarantee that profit kept flowing in.

Our government is for sale and it seems all the existing lobbying laws have done is push the price down so low that everyone's playing.

 

Another view might be that were government not so all-pervasive, lobbying groups need not be so active. Sierra Club, NRA, etc.

, 'Rat

 

Yeah, but what's good for General Motors (or Marathon, for that matter) is good for the country. Remember?

 

Does anybody have any numbers for the dollars-per-barrel royalty for oil withdrawn from federal lands?

I don't know how you'd find the quantities from the Gulf of Mexico, distinguishing the oil from the offshore lands of Louisiana and Texas, inside the federal offshore lands. Louisiana's ownership goes to three miles; Texas to three leagues, or 10.35 miles. Outside of those areas is federal ownership.

I guess gross dollar volumes of royalties to the feds is listed somewhere...

'Rat