Posted on 05/23/2008 5:46:26 AM PDT by coffee260
Congress shows its utter ignorance by pillorying oil executives about high gasoline prices when they are the primary cause due to not allowing the development of new domestic sources of oil or the building of new refineries.
Isn't that what everyone thought about housing?
What the article does not tell us is what portion of the oil produced is owned by the oil companies. Most oil is drilled for by the government or on government leased lands. I understand that the oil companies don’t make a lot if they buy oil at $130/barrel, before they sell it for $3.80/gallon after refining and taxes. I want to know what portion of the $130 price actually goes to the oil companies.
Drill here, drill now and build refineries. Tell Congress to stop playing politics with our lives and economy in order to hang on to power.
One other question. Does the cost of refining stay at 8% regardless of the cost of oil, or does it go up and down as well?
However, the federal (and most states) tax on fuel in done per-gallon, so the argument gets weaker as price rises.
Yep. If government would get out of the way of the market, the market would thrive.
Yeah, “Fact Check” being a Leftist outfit is simply obfuscating to cover up the obvious fact.
State and Federal Taxes pur gallon of gas is $.65 or more in most states.
Oil Companies make $.10 a gallon from a gallon of gas.
As I’ve been hearing on talk radio, the government collects something like 18% of the price of gas in taxes, while the oil companies get to keep 2% in profits. The oil companies do the exploration, drilling, refining, shipping, etc...at their own expense, while the government does absolutely nothing for a much larger profit.
One point to remember is that no one taxes the government profits.
Yes. Whoever wrote the article doesn't want to admit that the government DOES make more on gasoline than the oil companies. The numbers in the article prove that. The government take is 13%, and the oil companies profits range from 8.3 to 10.2%. And the so-called point about "after tax" income being lower than "total income" is BS, because the taxes the oil companies pay are just another expense.
But the excise tax at the gasoline pump is far from the only tax collected by governments in the whole process of getting oil out of the ground and refined and sold as a finished product. Goverment collects at each step of the process.
The very fact that there’s a question of whether or not the government makes more than the companies themselves means the government is taxing too much.
What? Where did you get this information? My husband has worked in the oil fields for years all over the U.S. and none of them have been government owned or leased lands, and the government does not do the drilling.
Not discussed are the costs associated with compliance with government environmental regulations.
A big factor are the extreme restrictions on drilling for domestic oil
Unfortunately, most oil is not produced in the US. We only produce about 6% of the total.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand
Even Leftist Nancy Pelosie admits that it about Supply and Demand. How else do you justify her current argument?
According to her and the rest of the Obama Democrats, their stopping US Govt from buying 70,00 barrels a day into the US Strategic Reserve “will reduce the price at the pump by as much as $.25”
Ok, then why Democrats and Green Cons, if increasing supply by 70,000 barrels a day is a good thing for Americans, why would not increase supply by 1,000,000 by drilling in ANWR decrease the price by several dollars?
The facts and the truth are all on ONE side in this debate. The problem is the “moderates” are to ghastly afraid of the Left to actually stand up for the truth and thus continually flail around from some sort of phony moral equivalence between the Right and the Left to avoid actually having to stand up for the factsP>
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