Jim Hightower
NOV 12, 2019
The one thing you never want
to hear your dentist say is “oops!” It’s also alarming to hear from a former
U.S. senator — 25 years after he passed a temporary oil subsidy for Big Oil.
With world petroleum prices
low at the time, Senator J. Bennett Johnston (D-LA) pushed through a special
break in 1995, temporarily exempting the giants from paying federal royalty
fees for the publicly owned crude they take from the Gulf of Mexico. The idea
was to give a brief reprieve on royalties to encourage oil corporations to
drill here.
But — oops! — our lawmakers
made a costly slip up: They forgot to specify that the exemption was temporary.
Once market prices recovered, the corporations were supposed to resume payments
to us taxpayers. “It was never the intent that everybody would get a free ride
forever,” says one official.
Sure enough, market prices
recovered by 2006. Yet the oil barons simply thumbed their nose at the public
saying, “Tough luck, suckers!” Since there’s no limit written into the law,
they’ve kept sucking up all the public oil they can — without paying a dime in
royalties.
This is no petty thievery.
Chevron, Shell, Exxon, BP, and even China’s state-run oil corporation are among
the giants that have taken at
least $18 billion from our nation’s treasury so far. Their haul
increases every day that they’re allowed to pump up profits — and continue
polluting the planet — through this unintended loophole.
The only thing bigger than Big
Oil’s avarice is its arrogance. The industry recently warned Congress not to
even try plugging the loophole, claiming such an attempt would be “engaging in
a dangerous game of bait and switch.”
What’s the one force bigger
than Big Oil? An infuriated public. To help spread the fury and stop this
thievery, go to www.SierraClub.org/topics/oil.
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