They are "sitting" on 10 year leases, sold to the highest bidder, with an 18% royalty fee per barrel pumped. After 10 years, Government can sell that plot out from under you to someone else and your out BILLIONS.
Even if oil companies double production, there hasn't been a refinery built for 32 years... Environmentalists won't let it happen. However, we have built, or are in the process of building, some 216 brand spankin new Ethanol refineries. Ethanol (corn), much like Enron, is built on lies. We should abandon it and use the new refineries for oil.
Government needs to be more business friendly, especially with the AMERICAN Oil Companies. Pounding them with additional taxation will not stimulate them into "doing the right thing", it will drive them overseas where they can operate at a lower cost and have better drilling rights. 70% of Exxon's sales come from overseas, that company alone paid the same amount in taxes as the bottom 50% of American Taxpayers.
Oil is a commodity and its price is based on supply and demand. Same with any other commodity, they ALL have futures markets and speculation.... Oil is the MOST valuable of all resources in the industrialized nations of the world. It shouldn't be surprising that with all thats going on the world, oil is expected to become more valuable.
You simply cannot blame the cost of oil on futures markets and speculation... if it were so easy to artificially cause the price to skyrocket, and make huge fortunes for the traders, we would see it in ALL the commodities. The facts have to match the speculation and the fact is, Draconian Global Warming measures, along with Mideast turmoil and explosive demand, have made the prospects of World Supply vs Demand look bleak.
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American Oil Companies, the ones that actually PRODUCE oil, make up less than 15% of the world's oil producing companies. When Congress talks about punishing "Big Oil" for the high cost of oil, you need to realize they can only "Punish" American oil companies with taxes, regulation and the occasional reach-around.
There are around 200 American oil companies, 2% of which actually produce oil, and the vast majority of them have holdings of less than 1 billion dollars... Not enough to even think about becoming producers.
The largest producer of US oil is BP, as in British Petroleum. Passing even greater taxes, like the "windfall profits tax", on American Oil Companies would give BP that much more of an advantage IN AMERICA!!!
Democrats will kill our golden goose.
