Republicans seek to aid oil co's for brutally low oil price & profit

Oh, wait, that was before commie Brandon stole the office with his agenda to destroy the hydrocarbon industry. Meanwhile, big pharma is laughing all the way to the bank.

Democrat lawmakers have introduced a bill seeking to impose higher taxes on oil companies for what they claim are “windfall” profits made from “cartel pricing” strategies, even as the Biden administration keeps enforcing policies which negatively affect the sector.

The “Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act” was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and his Democratic colleagues. It aims to “crack down on profiteering by Big Oil and return the industry’s excessive gains to working people,” according to a press release on Feb. 14. Five of the largest publicly traded oil companies—BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies—have reported profits totaling around $264.3 billion in fiscal 2022.

The proposal will impose a 50 percent quarterly tax on the difference between the current price for a barrel of oil and the average price between 2015 and 2019. The new tax will apply to both domestically produced and imported oil barrels.

“Big Oil’s obscene profits last year are the spoils of war and cartel pricing. Clawing back Big Oil’s windfall and returning it to the American families who paid for it at the pump is good policy that will help deter future price gouging,” said Whitehouse, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and a senior member of Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

“Congress should heed the president’s call, ignore the fossil fuel industry’s lies, and deliver this needed relief for the American people.”
...
“The reality is that American oil and gas producers simply do not—and cannot—price gouge. The largest non-state-owned oil company in the world (ExxonMobil) only has around 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves and production,” AXPC said in a blog post on May 23, 2022.

“Even if there was a mechanism for upstream producers to price gouge on the commodity market—which there isn’t—a company that controls such a small fraction of the world’s oil does not have the power to set the price of gasoline. This accusation is an example of the tail trying to wag the dog.”
...
At the end of last year, the American Energy Alliance released a report (pdf) stating 125 ways the Biden administration made it harder for American energy companies to produce oil and gas in the country.

This includes, among others, significantly increasing regulations, eliminating “federal fossil fuel ‘subsidies’ wherever possible,” hiring radical environmental activists to key positions, rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, and selling oil to China from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/democrats-propose-windfall-profits-tax-on-oil-firms-accuse-companies-of-war-profiteering-and-price-gouging_5062410.html

Good luck!