Did you know we pay subsidy to the oil and gas industry to the tune of $3.43 million a day

My head hurts now that I read this..
Full story here

Jill Lancelot, co founder of the organization Taxpayers for common sense, said one purpose of the study is to pressure Congress to eliminate handouts for oil and gas companies.

She said the industry turned a profit of $32 billion for the first quarter of this year, but received public handouts even as America's crushing debt grew.

"There are three basic truths regarding oil and gas companies today: They are hugely profitable, heavily subsidized and well-connected in Washington," Lancelot said during an interview.

In the last session of Congress, she said, oil and gas lobbyists numbered 798 - in excess of the 535 members of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Industry executives declined to comment on the study because they had not seen it. But a spokeswoman for the Texas Oil & Gas Association said the industry's benefits to cities, counties and the state were easy to quantify.

Taxpayers for Common Sense calculated the Texas subsidy to the oil and gas industry at $3.43 million a day or more than $1.25 billion annually.

the spokeswoman for the Texas Oil & Gas Association said they directly employ 297,000 people and pays taxes of $7 billion to the state and local governments. Texas' oil and gas companies have seen double-digit job growth as other sectors struggled in a recession. and agreed they did indeed profit of $32 billion for the first quarter of this year....

So someone explain to me why.. after all these years..are we taxpayers handing over to big oil some $3.43 million a day.. that number is just for the west texas new mexico region... lord knows what they get in handouts in other places???

I'll leave you with one final quote from the group

"This industry should pay the cost of doing business," she said. "It is simply wrong to have wealthy corporations rake in more than $30 billion in just three months and not be willing to pay their fair share."

I refuse to drive or have a car simply because i will not help the gas and oil industry by giving them my money.
I would rather suffer then make them profits.

While not everyone can do this....I made the decision as a teen and have never looked back and am happy I made that decision.

I have pointed this out many times here on threads.

And, they let them pull oil out of the ground on pubic land, and the fed gov gets nothing back. Big oil has consistently been the most subsidized industry. Considering that a huge portion of our global military presence is also a huge oil subsidy, not to mention our infrastructure designed around the use of gas, it is unbelievable how much the oil industry is subsidized.

reply to post by poet1b


Ya know... that just freakin astounds me..
the most profitable industry on the planet... and we pay them a subsidy???

Why???

I mean... what have they done for me lately...other than raise the cost of fuel to where it's become a burden...
where's my subsidy to help defray the cost of having to do business with big oil???

Geez... Okay Obama... there's a cut you can make to lower the national debt and no one is gonna complain

$3.43 million you say !

you are talking about peanuts here so let me explain

As usual, it's about $200 billion more than most news stories are reporting. For the proposed fiscal year 2009 budget, which President Bush released today, the real size is not, as many news stories have reported, $515.4 billion—itself a staggering sum—but, rather, $713.1 billion.

This was back in 2009 figures

Today we are spending a whopping $3tr a week or $428,571,428.00 per day

I will see you're $3,43 and raise you $428,57

You get to pay the bill and zionist corporations that are starting these wars get to reap the rewards.

Nice to see black water is in trouble with the courts today but the fine will be less than one days profit so thats some democracy you have that allows this to happen when people are dieing in hospital of cancer and can not get treatment and less than four people were killed in the USA by terrorists last year,

Time the trators in the USA faced the terror of the people holding them to account don't you think

reply to post by Master_007


not per year per day

$3.43 million a day or more than $1.25 billion annually

wonder how much that comes out to per hour???

reply to post by DaddyBare


$142,694.63 dollars per hour

24*365=8760

$1,250,000,000/ 8760=$142,694.63

or $2,378.23 per minutes

$142,694,63/ 60 minutes.=$2,378,23

reply to post by neo96


Neo... Should have known you'd come through for me with a quick answer...
Of course I was being rhetorical...any way you look at it that's a large chunk of change....
however I reiterate...
seems to me his is one damn big item to bring to the chopping block when it comes to reducing the federal debt...

reply to post by DaddyBare


its alot of money no doubt but that is one of many things that need to be cut.

this country has forgotten the value of the dollar and it sticker shock.

the oil industry is a tough call to make for me considering how hard and how much they put into finding and bringing oil to the markets they spend billions just finding it and then off to the next one and the next and so on.

and the entire worlds economies revolve around oil everything.

all government subsidies need to be cut but that medicine will be worse than the disease.

Originally posted by DaddyBare

"There are three basic truths regarding oil and gas companies today: They are hugely profitable, heavily subsidized and well-connected in Washington," Lancelot said during an interview.

But there's one basic truth to writing an article: make sure to spin it left or right, but leave out the truth. And this writer is obviously a master at her craft.

They get tax-breaks, not subsidies. The difference between the two is which direction money flows (or doesn't). With subsidies, the government gives bags of cash to [insert poor disenfranchised business]. With tax breaks, [poor disenfranchised business] doesn't have to pay as much in taxes as others. Her article indicates that taxpayers are being stolen from (we are, because we're taxed in the first place) and that money is being given to the oil companies.

Which gets readership up, but other than that it's a bunch of baloney. What is actually happening is that the government isn't getting that revenue from the oil companies, so the taxpayers are paying in more. But it's not then being given to the oil companies, like a Robin Hood scheme, it's just being used to pay government debt.

Also, oil companies don't make huge profits. The actual dollar amount is a big number (billions of dollars) but their profit margin is tiny, usually less than 8%. Which means almost all of their profit this year goes back into next year's cost.

Don't get me wrong here: I don't think they should get the big tax breaks they do get. They're businesses and taxes are a part of it. They should quit their crying. But they've gotten these breaks for so long now that killing them will raise oil prices, whether big oil needs to or not to meet their profit margin. It's all a dirty mess.

/TOA

Originally posted by DaddyBare
reply to post by Master_007

 

not per year per day

$3.43 million a day or more than $1.25 billion annually

wonder how much that comes out to per hour???

Yes but i'm sorry my figure was wrong and comes in at closer to $3bn a day not per week as i stated so the anual bill on the oil is the equivlant to about half a days costs to the military budget

Peanuts was the wrong word and should be replaced with 'half a nats knacker'

And who do you think owns Wall Street? The Oil companies, with their huge profits, so essentially most if not all of the annual U.S. deficit goes to the oil companies these days with the bank buyouts.

And they got huge numbers of people convinced all that money is going to the ghettos in welfare checks.

Talk about fooling people.

Originally posted by DrumsRfun
I refuse to drive or have a car simply because i will not help the gas and oil industry by giving them my money.
I would rather suffer then make them profits.

While not everyone can do this....I made the decision as a teen and have never looked back and am happy I made that decision.

I, too, at one point, thought that merely not driving was a good way to protest the oil industry. Then I realized everything I buy is shipped to me using it, and most the products I use are made with it.

Not driving is indeed a good first step. But moving beyond that to a place where you can limit EVERY way in which you interact with the petrol economy is a much longer, difficult path. I encourage you on it!

Originally posted by DrumsRfun
I refuse to drive or have a car simply because i will not help the gas and oil industry by giving them my money.
I would rather suffer then make them profits.

While not everyone can do this....I made the decision as a teen and have never looked back and am happy I made that decision.

I, too, at one point, thought that merely not driving was a good way to protest the oil industry. Then I realized everything I buy is shipped to me using it, and most the products I use are made with it.

Not driving is indeed a good first step. But moving beyond that to a place where you can limit EVERY way in which you interact with the petrol economy is a much longer, difficult path. I encourage you on it!

And guess who profits when goods are made in one part of the world, and shipped to another?

If you think we have too much plastics here, you should see the third world, they are flooded with plastics.

As the middle east runs out of oil over the next 5 to 10 years, and all the easy to get quality oil is gone, maybe then we might start to see some sanity again. Yes our lives will change, we will no longer be during multi-ton behemoths to buy a six pack, but life will no longer be so easily controlled by the mega oil corps. You gotta figure they are now in everyone's pockets.