Source: Democrats Worried About Gas Prices Are Begging Oil Companies to Drill More | The New Republic
The top five U.S.-based oil producers got nearly $2 billion back from the IRS between 2015 and 2022, and paid out an annual average of $40.3 billion in dividends and stock buybacks through that time. There’s an obvious injustice to multinational corporations paying very few taxes and reporting record profits as gas prices soar, which is why a number of lawmakers have recently proposed a windfall tax on such profits. That revenue would help ease pain at the pump.
…Democratic critics say oil and gas companies are translating high gas prices into stock buybacks and executive level pay, rather than lowering gas prices by increasing production. Fossil fuel companies, in turn, say they can’t drill more because of constraints from investors, compounded by hostile signals from an environmentalist administration. Republicans—many of them receiving generous donations from those companies—are extra focused on the final point. Obviously, the more they can blame high gas prices on the White House, the better.
All of the above parties want to see more fossil fuel production. None of them are engaging with the findings of the IPCC’s recent report: that to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, global coal, oil, and gas use will need to decline by 95, 60, and 45 percent respectively by 2050 (compared to 2019 levels).
New York Representative Yvette Clarke was the odd woman out among her colleagues. “Oil is an unstable global commodity that is completely out of our control,” she said. “Now is not the time to drill more,” Clarke added, before calling for increased investments in clean energy.
…Despite what Manchin and Republicans have argued, there are very few external constraints on drilling being imposed by the Biden administration. As Representative Paul Tonko pointed out, oil production has increased by more than two million barrels per day since Biden took office. In its short tenure the Biden administration has approved more oil and gas drilling on public lands per month, on average, than Donald Trump’s did in its first three years in office. Before Russia invaded Ukraine, the U.S. was already the world’s largest oil producer and on track to be the world’s largest exporter of gas thanks to changes made during the Obama administration. While pledging to work with the EU to reduce energy demand abroad, the Biden administration has been relatively quiet about doing the same at home; instead of emphasizing investments in energy efficiency, public transit, etc., to free up oil and gas in the U.S. to send abroad to address the Ukraine crisis, the administration seems to be assuming that domestic demand for oil and gas will keep steady and should be met with expanded supply.
…If oil and gas executives aren’t going to increase production out of patriotic duty—or to fetch $200 per barrel—they’re also not likely to just give up on the $1 to 4 trillion of fossil fuel assets that could be rendered worthless if the world actually enacts climate policy and limits warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), per the IPCC’s latest report. Appealing to these CEOs’ better angels is pointless. Although they hand fossil fuel companies billions in subsidies each year, American policymakers mostly confine themselves to begging or berating them into doing what they want. Wednesday’s hearing saw a bit of both.
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