Oil Subsidies

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Senators Sanders and Boxer have proposed the Climate Protection and Sustainable Energy Acts to reduce U.S. carbon emissions and end subsidies for fossil fuels.[read more]

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A recent analysis by the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) summarized the costs of the federal government's various "subsidies" for energy from different sources. This is both useful and timely, since discussions of specific subsidies such as the expiring wind production tax credit inevitably lead to questions about how incentives for renewable energy compare to those for oil, gas, nuclear, and other more traditional sources.[read more]

As debt negotiations continue in Congress, President Obama appears to be sticking to his guns on repealing the enormous tax breaks enjoyed by the oil and gas industry. The industry takes advantage of tax breaks dating back to the dawn of the oil age – the kind of fiscal encouragement intended to support nascent businesses, not...[read more]

While Republicans hold the national debt increase hostage, Congress is deciding what to cut and what to gut (expansion or creation of new programs is largely off the table). Energy subsidies are already falling under the knife. Mark Muro at Brookings figures that if we're going to they're going after energy subsidies anyway, now is the...[read more]

I finally finished watching the archived video from last week's Senate Finance Committee hearing with the heads of the five largest major oil companies in the US, including the two that are based in the EU. The few nuggets of real information and insight that were exchanged were nearly drowned out by political posturing, but my hat is...[read more]

This essay highlights the reason I loathe politics. Here I present a case in which politicians present a partial story and withhold key findings in order to push a specific agenda. But their trump card is that if things don’t go as planned they can assign blame elsewhere. The media is complicit because they have simply lapped up the...[read more]

It is no secret that consumers are suffering from very high gasoline prices. And as a result of these high prices, ExxonMobil just reported a first-quarter profit of $10.7 billion — 69 percent higher than a year ago.  The national level of disgust and anger is approaching record levels as we watch the loss of our hard-earned dollars...[read more]

While I will always think the President could bring more political gravitas to energy policy, at least there's some interesting energy dynamics in the 2012 budget proposal released yesterday.[read more]

In Part I we saw that the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) pays for shoddy studies and then cites them to fear-monger into getting more tax dollars. Hypocritically, when they are challenged with a critical point on ethanol, they attempt to cast doubt by questioning the source of funding from the challenger (as shown here). Here in Part...[read more]

We recently have seen a devastating example of how corporations, through their lobbyists and campaign contributions, end up controlling the government agencies ostensibly in place to regulate their activities. Well, speaking of Totalitarian, Long-Term Corporatism and that unfortunate oil disaster… Yes, Tony’s small drop in a very big...[read more]