wrote:

wrote:

Amazing, Cheney is giving away $65 Billion in Gulf oil/gas to
ExxMobBpShell without
even collecting the 12.5 percent royalties (NyTimes)


That sounded familiar. So I looked and found it. Here are parts of
today's news article:

"...New projections buried in the Interior Departement's budget plan,
aniticpate 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 adminostration figures, the government will give up more than
$7billion in payments by 2011. The Companies are expected to get the
largess, known as royalty relief, even though the adminstration assumes
that oil prices will remain above $50 a barrel throughout the period.
"Administration officials say THE BENEFITS ARE DICTATED BY LAWS THAT
DATE TO 1996 (my capitalization), when energy prices were low and
Congress wanted to encourage more exploration in the deep water of the
Gulf of Mexico.
....
"But what seemed like modest incentives 10 years ago have ballooned to
levels that alarm even ardent supporters of the oil and gas industry.

There was a tax incentive some months ago that gave a $300million break
to oil companies to encourage development. Personally, I figure $60-70
a barrel is incentive enough. I'm no friend of these tax breaks, nor
particularly of big oil.

However, I quoted the news story above to point out that the tax breaks
started in 1996. Clinton was in office and Cheney was in private life
at that time, IIRC. And Cheney can't give away anything--Congress has
to act first. Accuracy, and not hypberbole, will get us a lot more
truth.

Now you've done it. You've thrown facts into the mix. :-)


Matt