OLEAN -- This column falls under the heading: A Couple of Things You'll Hear More About Soon. As the weather gets warmer, so will these two issues.
1) Big Oil Ripoff -- If you hear the term "royalty relief," what comes to mind? Giving Queen Elizabeth a pack of Tums? Would that it were that innocent.
The term is nasty news for American motorists and homeowners. Big Oil firms are supposed to pay the federal government -- and thus the American taxpayers -- billions of dollars in "royalties" for the right to drill and pump oil and natural gas from federal territory, both lands and coastal waters.
A "royalty" under this definition means a share of the proceeds reaped from lands or seas rich in oil or minerals given back to one from whom the property is leased. The practice and terminology comes from days of yore when kings and queens automatically got a piece of the action.
The government started forgiving Big Oil royalties about a decade ago, when energy prices were relatively cheap, so as to encourage exploration for new oil and natural gas sources in the unknown but promising waters off our southern coast in the Gulf of Mexico. Those sea floors proved bountiful. Even after damage by Hurricane Katrina, scores of companies have been making billions in profits off the gulf coastal fields, including the biggest of Big Oil firms -- ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, Anadarko.
Indeed, ExxonMobil in 2005 listed overall net income of more than $36 billion, more profit than any American company has made in one year, ever. The net income was so huge that the Senate last fall passed a fiscal measure that would levy a one-year-only $5 billion "windfall" profits tax on Big Oil companies. The House was supposed to get around to considering it just about now.
All this obscene profit-taking is occurring in an economically dire period when American motorists are being told the reason they are paying $3.50 a gallon in some areas is because it now costs so much to find and produce "new" oil. This, of course, will sooner or later adversely affect the general economy and spin us toward recession. It's hard to spring for a new car or TV set or roof or any big purchase when your winter natural gas bill is more than your mortgage, and your car tank fill-up price is three times what it was when you bought the vehicle. And when Ford lays off 30,000 workers, the giant firm may not say so, but it's partially because the automaker knows profitable but gas-hogging SUVs aren't going to sell like they have been.
Now for the nasty part. On Valentine's Day, our federal government gave us all a big, sloppy wet kiss by revealing not only is the windfall profits tax dead as a doornail, but that the Interior Department's budget will let Big Oil pump over the next half decade approximately $65 billion worth of crude oil and natural gas from federal lands and waters -- territory belonging to you and me as taxpayers -- without paying one penny in royalties to the common coffers. That amounts to about $7 billion in forgiven royalties over five years.
Wait, it gets worse. President George W. Bush, who grew up in a Big Oil family, and House Republicans are striving to kill the windfall profits tax on major oil companies. The president bluntly says he has nothing against such huge profits -- it's the way of our business system -- and that he will veto the Senate's entire tax bill if it comes to him, because it contains the $5 billion windfall levy against Big Oil. And he means it.
Wait, it gets worse. Add to this a newly filed lawsuit against the federal government by major Big Oil player Kerr-McGee Exploration and Development -- a court action that, if successful, would mean about four-fifths of oil and gas from the Gulf of Mexico would be royalty-free. This would hit federal taxpayers, you and me, in the wallet for yet another $28 billion in federal income we'd have to make up somewhere.
Wait, it gets worse. Two weeks ago, the Interior Department announced more than 40 oil companies wrongfully claimed more than $500 million in royalty relief for 2004 alone.
Now, royalty relief as a concept was OK back when crude was selling for $10 a barrel, and the Big Oil firms were right that it didn't pay to start explorations for new producer fields and sea rig sites. But crude goes for $70 a barrel these days, and is unlikely -- according to federal projections -- to get below $50 a barrel in the next five years, if ever again.
So, even previous friends of Big Oil are squealing "giveaway" on Capitol Hill.
Even Rep. Richard Pombo, the California Republican who chairs the powerful House Resources Committee -- and the rabidly anti-environmental member who is trying to gut the Endangered Species Act -- is cheesed off. He told The New York Times he doesn't believe "there is a single member of Congress who thinks you should get royalty relief at $70 a barrel."
Tell that to Dubya, who apparently remains unconcerned at Big Oil's blatant gouging, infuriating greed and clever gaming of the system. If the Kerr-McGee suit is successful, and if current federal budget provisions remain unchanged, the government will lose $35 billion in royalties from Big Oil during the imminent half decade. This, as Edmund L. Andrews in the Times presciently has noted, is the same amount Dubya "is proposing to cut from Medicare, Medicaid, and child support enforcement programs over the same period."
Boy, that's getting your priorities straight, huh?
2) Gagging Our Rocket Scientists -- Science is defined by Webster's as "systematized knowledge derived from observation, study, and experimentation." As taxpayers, you and I each year pay substantial portions of our income to support this search for natural truth so our elected leaders can act upon such findings, be they promising or threatening.
Many Americans, since 1969 when we put a man on the moon, tend to think of NASA -- the National Aeronautics and Space Administration -- as the foremost agency in this field when it comes to cutting-edge science. (It may well not be -- veteran astronauts say NASA has become rusty in recent years and couldn't easily return us to the moon.)
Be that as it may, NASA is a hugely important federal agency with hugely important scientists conducting hugely important studies. But two weeks ago, we learned from public news accounts that, despite an official policy of "scientific openness," some of the NASA climate researchers studying global warming and the greenhouse effect were being -- in essence -- censored in what they could report to the public about their findings. A minor urproar ensued.
But now it's getting louder. Just before the weekend, The New York Times broke a story that detailed how top political appointees of the Bush administration in the NASA 300-man press office "exerted strong pressure" during the 2004 presidential campaign to curtail news releases on a broad range of scientific subjects that might offend the right-wing crackpots, naysayers and rosy-eyed fact-deniers who were essential to Dubya's re-election chances.
The impeded news releases included bad news findings on glacier melting, climate, expanding holes in the ozone layer, alarming satellite readings, intensified pollution and earth sciences in general that will affect our ability to live and survive on this planet.
Aggrieved scientists and professional career press officers alike are now blabbing to the Times and other news outlets about the enforced delay of such news until after the 2004 election. The policy delayed or eliminated scientific news releases by about 75 percent, compared to the year before.
The Bush administration oversight was so intense that scientists were proscribed from even using the phrase "global warming" and had to say "climate change" instead. The word ban extended to some of our finest research hubs around the country, including the famous Jet Propulsion Lab in California.
The ability of our top scientists to speak freely about the truths they find and what to do about them has routinely been part of America's strength and leadership position in the world -- admired and relied upon across the planet. Monkeying around with that historic strength is not only dangerous, but extremely stupid.
Now the argument within the halls of government is narrowing to how much openness is appropriate concerning the implications of scientific work for federal policy. But the answer to that question should not be based on politics. It should be based upon distribution of knowledge. Let the public learn. Let its members take that knowledge to the polls. Let Americans pressure their leaders and elected officials for more knowing, for more understanding, for more solutions. Don't keep us in the dark.
Yet, when the Times participated in recent telephone conferences with the Bush political appointees at the head of NASA's public affairs division -- reporters Andrew C. Revkin and Warren E. Leary report -- those officials argued that "more" control of scientists' access to the news media was necessary, not less.
This government and this nation are starting to flirt with some very troublesome political beliefs and policy procedures that go beyond partisanship, and which approach perilous implications for the country's future and the well-being of all Americans -- indeed, of the globe. These shroud-new-knowledge policies and beliefs have been tried in the past by various benighted leaders around the world, at terrible cost to humanity.
We should all be paying attention.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Feb. 21 2006 |