House Votes to Repeal Oil Company Tax Breaks
House passes bill forcing Big Oil to pay
Senate holds hearings on the simmering dispute of royalties, tax breaks
By document.write("");John W. Schoendocument.write('');
Senior Producer
MSNBC
Updated: 3:17 p.m. PT Jan 18, 2007
With the price of crude falling, Big Oil faces another big headache on Capitol Hill.
The House passed a bill Thursday evening to raise nearly $15 billion in taxes through a combination of higher royalties, added fees and a reversal of tax breaks handed out by the Bush administration and Republican Congress.
Earlier in the day, the Senate held hearings on the simmering dispute over federal oil leases that could cost the industry billions of dollars in back royalty payments.
At the center of the dispute is a series of leases awarded by the Interior Department in 1998 and 1999 that omitted a routine clause calling for a boost in payments if oil prices rose above $34 a barrel. Oil rose to well over $70 a barrel last year and is currently trading around $50, but the government has been unable to collect higher fees to reflect those rising prices.
In prepared testimony Thursday, Mark Gaffigan of the Government Accountability Office told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that the flaws in the leases, together with the recent rise in oil prices, could cost taxpayers up to $10 billion in lost royalty revenues. So far, he said, about $1 billion has been lost.
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16691568
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Poor Exxon/Mobil/Chevron will have to pay taxes again..........
Oil Royalties
Poor Exxon/Mobil/Chevron? I dont think so. you are the idiot that is paying for the increase in royalties dummy. you are for it just because the dems have started it. Think about it, do you actually think the oil companies are going to pay this. you are by higher prices at the pump. with idiots like you voting in people like Nancz Pollock, You are holding yourself back.
exxon, mobil and chevron are companies, not governments or political parties. The company answers to stock holders. Stock holders have money. The price of gas means nothing to them, UNLESS it effects their stock price or profits. you and the rest of the usa need either heating oil or gas for one thing or another. So, to get the money back that Nancz Pollock wants to take from them, they simply raise the price of gas. Nancy Pollack just raised the price of livin for you and everybody else. Youre just too ignorant to realise it.
?
I take it that you didn't realize that Wahoo was being sarcastic? None of us here really approve of how the oil companies have been benefiting from Bush's regime. And none of us here are idiots, so insulting us is not going to win you any favors or get anyone to listen to you.
Puh-leeze
So we're the bad guys, huh? We're ignorant? Oil companies have made obscene record profits each quarter in the last 5 years. When we give them tax breaks that other companies and citizens don't get, we are IN FACT raising the cost of living on ourselves through our taxes.
You wouldn't happen to be associated with oil down there in Texas? Maybe with well drilling and such, are you?
Republicans are soooo cute
Republicans are soooo cute -- especially when they try to sound "intellectual" like their mentor, Dubya.
Actually, they support terrorist regimes
So says Dubya...
The oil companies import oil from terrorist supporting/harboring countries to sell to Americans. The money being used to pay for that imported oil goes to those countries, which is pumped (no pun intended) back into their economies.
From where I sit, it is republican policy to support terrorism. The fact that republicans abhor effective cafe standards only validates the claim.
Conservative. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from a Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.
~Ambrose Bierce, 1842-1914, American Author, Editor, Journalist.
Gee
It is painful to see a Conservative try to be intelligent. First, you call someone Pollock? That brings a lot of intelligence to the conversation. I am Irish, but I work with a Polish guy that could probably kick your teeth in. Secondly isn't Pollock that fish they use for the fake crabmeat?
The fact of the matter is the big oil companies have been milking the American public every since Bush took office with the "War on Terror" as an excuse. Since the talk of raising their taxes and ending their subsidies, gas has dropped about a quarter a gallon here. If you are not smart enough to know that big oil was milking you, and are not smart enough to know Nancz Pollock as you put it, is putting a stop to it, frankly I don't pity you. Crawl back under the rock you occupy and live so blissfully under.
Bump, RDillon, Bump!
You're to be commended for filleting the bigot better than I...so this is their big issue? Heritage? LOL!
Bravo RDillon
Submarine USS Wahoo ss238
USS Pollack SS180 was a fighting sub!!!!
This guy doesnt know what he is talking about
It is true that the gas prices have dropped dramaticaly
in the past 6months.
End their subsidies and they can be on their own from now
on, no more corporate welfare.