Will Congress allow the oil companies to stick it to the American public once again by giving them $7 billion over the next five years? It's amazing to think that an industry with record profits, where Exxon alone earned $10 billion in the last quarter of last year, can stand there with their hand-out.
Bend over and grab your ankles America!U.S. Has Royalty Plan to Give Windfall to Oil Companies The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years. New projections, buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, anticipate that the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government. Based on the administration figures, the government will give up more than $7 billion in payments between now and 2011. The companies are expected to get the largess, known as royalty relief, even though the administration assumes that oil prices will remain above $50 a barrel throughout that period. Administration officials say that the benefits are dictated by laws and regulations that date back to 1996, when energy prices were relatively low and Congress wanted to encourage more exploration and drilling in the high-cost, high-risk deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
