tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53246864840716464.post3963840927574320057..comments2024-02-29T00:46:38.800-08:00Comments on Washingtons Blog: Environmentalists Didn't Cause The Gulf Oil Spill ... Peak Oil DidUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53246864840716464.post-89524089313778809442010-06-14T00:38:59.374-07:002010-06-14T00:38:59.374-07:00Jardinero1,
Don't you remember Bush's cu...Jardinero1, <br /><br />Don't you remember Bush's curious "energy bill"? How quickly we forget, eh? LOL!<br /><br />President Obama has proposed rolling back the oil industry tax breaks that you suggest don't exist. He just talked about it at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh a couple weeks ago. I guess he'll be excited to know that they don't exist, thanks to Ronald Reagan.<br /><br />FYI, a quick Google of "Bush oil industry tax cuts" got about 6,000,000 results. That's gotta hurt...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53246864840716464.post-2584224593795968522010-06-11T21:52:52.771-07:002010-06-11T21:52:52.771-07:00Jardinero1, I beleive you are looking for this lin...Jardinero1, I beleive you are looking for this link. It is the S.395 Bill passed in 1995. Section 3.B(ii) removes taxes to larger and larger oil quatities resulting from deeper and deeper wells. Wells over 800 meters receive the highest benefit. Taxpayers subsidize deepwater drilling.<br /><br />http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c104:5:./temp/~c104bSDPf7:e18822:Ryanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08433895013506548243noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53246864840716464.post-26903050575740367382010-06-11T12:39:38.122-07:002010-06-11T12:39:38.122-07:00Southern Gentleman,
References would be useful....Southern Gentleman, <br /><br />References would be useful. The only tax cuts the oil industry ever received were Carter era accelerated depreciation allowances. Those were phased out during the Reagan administration. <br /><br />Halliburton is not an oil company. <br /><br />I would appreciate some reference to concessions which the MMS made. <br /><br />Refineries in Harris County, Texas where I live pay the same tax rates as everyone else. You can type in Exxon or the like on the appraisal district and check that yourself. There are no other taxes in Texas to abate for a refinery. <br /><br />Nobody is begging a refinery not to leave. Nobody has to. You can't just move a refinery. It is nearly impossible to get permits for a new refinery anywhere in the USA. Even if you could, refineries, are multi-year, multi-billion dollar investments requiring thousands of well educated people to build and operate. Refineries also are more profitable when they are placed in close proximity their final markets. <br /><br />Your last paragraph, if true which it is not, is not for want of oversight. The refineries here in Harris County are under the oversight of the EPA and the TCEQ. Refinery operators spend great sums both in house and on consultants to stay in compliance. It really is not as simple as paying a small fine. It is not even about avoiding the fine. There is Texas tort law to deal with and no business wants to be a defendant in an environmental liability case with a Texas jury.Jardinero1https://www.blogger.com/profile/17607597144198493951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53246864840716464.post-65653044222691171152010-06-10T00:49:40.728-07:002010-06-10T00:49:40.728-07:00Jardinero1,
Well, there were the Bush era oil in...Jardinero1, <br /><br />Well, there were the Bush era oil industry tax cuts to start with. Halliburton benefited from these cuts even though they headquarter their subsidiaries overseas to dodge Uncle Sam (including some "headquarters" that are nothing more than a corporate-size PO box). <br /><br />There was the Bush-era Minerals Management Service passing out contracts that were almost criminal in their concessions to Big Oil. There are several expensive safety measures that are required by other developed countries but not by the US, but also just the mineral rights themselves were extremely undervalued in these contracts.<br /><br />The refineries in the US, such as those along the Gulf Coast, get generous tax credits and abatements at the local and state level that effectively function like subsidies. The whole economy in that area is underpinned by the salaries paid by these companies, so they are practically begged not to leave. <br /><br />These refineries also regularly pump well above the legal amounts of pollutants into the air and just pay the relatively small fine if they get caught. The fines are often less than what the company stands to gain from a toxic release.A Southern Gentlemanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02262063524394846703noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53246864840716464.post-40761085780588376442010-06-08T14:52:09.943-07:002010-06-08T14:52:09.943-07:00I don't think anyone in the oil industry plans...I don't think anyone in the oil industry plans multi-billion dollar off-shore investments based on the pronouncements of peak oil theory hawkers.<br /><br />Southern Gentleman, I would be very curious as to what tax breaks and subsidies the oil industry receives. My own impression of the oil industry is that it operates within a very hostile regulatory regime in the United States and in Europe. It is uniformly villified and excoriated by the body politic. The government has never bailed out a failing oil or gas company.Jardinero1https://www.blogger.com/profile/17607597144198493951noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53246864840716464.post-40730497431951362092010-06-08T00:34:32.276-07:002010-06-08T00:34:32.276-07:00I'm so glad to see an update on this site. It ...I'm so glad to see an update on this site. It made my day. Keep it coming!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53246864840716464.post-15556534705686348032010-06-07T21:06:16.887-07:002010-06-07T21:06:16.887-07:00Thank for this. I agree that BP has been extremely...Thank for this. I agree that BP has been extremely negligent and to blame it on environmentalists is ridiculous because if environmentalists had there way oil would not be used at all. The location of the drilling is irrelevant. Have you seen the live video feeds of the oil spill? They are very interesting. http://cbt20.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/watch-pbs-real-time-feed-from-the-gulf-oil-lea/canadian52https://www.blogger.com/profile/05204613376289798731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53246864840716464.post-88576854975668123322010-06-07T12:04:55.359-07:002010-06-07T12:04:55.359-07:00Do you think it would be interesting or worthwhile...Do you think it would be interesting or worthwhile to frame peak oil in terms of diminishing marginal returns?Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07272515878609126200noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53246864840716464.post-79563163470171655292010-06-07T10:58:14.090-07:002010-06-07T10:58:14.090-07:00Well the cheap stuff is certainly gone. There are...Well the cheap stuff is certainly gone. There are still "massive" reserves held on land in tar sands, which are distastefully expensive to refine but are less likely to cause immediate environmental disaster or loss of life. The decision to go ultra-deepwater is a calculated one, weighing the chance and costs of disaster against a consistently higher overhead for the same payload.<br /><br />If we quit subsidizing oil and started pricing it according to the traditional laws of supply and demand, then the jump to alternatives would be much easier. Currently oil companies are handed tax breaks even while they are abusing overseas tax havens and not being prosecuted for it. We don't charge consumers for their environmental impact like some European countries, we don't take world supply (essentially an unknown) into account when pricing it, and we don't account for the costs incurred by our government and military to maintain our cheap access to it and support its use (how much of our highway budget would be better spent on high speed rail or other forms of mass transit? - certainly alot of it).<br /><br />Deepwater spills are an interesting scenario though, especially post-peak. Leaks of this magnitude and difficulty are bound to drain a good portion of reserves from their locale. It may ultimately be the lost product that coaxes Big Oil to wait for deepwater. When it is properly expensive enough they won't need to cut any corners while drilling and will get not only more money per gallon but more gallons and less money spent on cleanup and PR.A Southern Gentlemanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02262063524394846703noreply@blogger.com