[ QUOTE ]
Your links, while entertaining, were for bills that did NOT PASS. You are providing non-existent law as your proof?!?!?
[/ QUOTE ]
Check your facts. The SAFE act passed:
http://www.mentata.com/ds/retrieve/congress/vote/VC107H16
"Passed 240 Yea to 189 Nay"
and see
http://www.house.gov/defazio/080201EGRelease.shtml
DeFazio and others introduced amendments to the bill to try to raise the fuel efficiency standards in the US (CAFE to 27.5 mpg), and to create incentives for alternative fuel vehicles - but they were struck down:
http://capwiz.com/naco/issues/votes/?votenum=311&chamber=H&congress=1071
An amendment WAS passed that limited the amount of exploration that could be done in ANWR to 2,000 of the 1.5 million acres.
I know the most recent Energy Bill has not yet passed - my reason for presenting it was to show that the same practices that have been done in previous bills, are still being done in the newest bills (if I had not presented the latest bill, you may have argued "sure, they did that in the past, but aren't doing it anymore"). I presented previous bills that DID pass and went into effect, and the latest bill introduced. If you want more examples, I can provide them.
[ QUOTE ]
And you link about tax credits is about
companies breaking the law. That's criminal activity NOT gov't policy.
[/ QUOTE ]
It's something though that the government is making easier for companies to do, and an example of how the credits that ARE in place are manipulated. It's been well-known that oil companies have been doing this for a long time - but there is only an attempt at holding them liable for it when it gets too much media attention.
[ QUOTE ]
ALSO, your prices are wrong. Look at this list. As you can see, the base price for gasoline is roughly equal for America and Europe (cents per liter
www.gaspricewatch.com):
[/ QUOTE ]
The price I used (for Canada) was almost the same as this one (I said 40 cents per liter, this says 37). It was the price YOU claimed that was wrong (80 cents per gallon).
[ QUOTE ]
Italy 48
Britain 42
France 40
Germany 37
Canada 37
U.S. 36
[/ QUOTE ]
And Japan, 63 cents.
As I said before, the European countries do also spend a lot of money on similar things as us (i.e. military handouts to countries in the middle east for favorable pricing, military efforts in the middle east, strategic oil reserves, etc.) - the difference is that they pay for those costs with a petroleum tax, whereas we pay for it with income taxes. For both, the cost to the oil companies is lowered by these efforts, but the difference is where the money comes from to pay for it.
[ QUOTE ]
If U.S. oil companies were receiving free money from the government, the gasoline would be MUCH cheaper than Europe... say 25 cents per liter. That is NOT the case, therefore it's apparent that the U.S. government does NOT subsidize oil companies.
[/ QUOTE ]
Why do you assume that if they get a subsidy, that it would translate directly to a drop in price, rather than extra profit? 25 cents per liter would be roughly 1 dollar per gallon (a little less). Since there are roughly 180 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel sold in the US each year, that would require roughly $180 billion in subsidies. The subsidies aren't anywhere near enough to support that much of a drop in price. They can support a drop in price of a few cents per liter - with that money being paid out of income taxes. In the rest of the world, they use a petroleum tax to pay for things like military actions and investments to protect oil reserves - and add to that essentially a "sin" tax (so their petroleum tax is more than just the cost of military actions, investments in military equipment, strategic oil reserves, and other indirect costs of petroleum dependence).
[ QUOTE ]
That is NOT the case, therefore it's apparent that the U.S. government does NOT subsidize oil companies.
[/ QUOTE ]
Then tell me what those tax credits and other issues are actually doing? Who pays for the strategic oil reserve? Who pays for the roughly $15 billion in military aid we give to middle eastern countries each year? Exxon? Nope - income taxes.
Canada's oil prices are only slightly higher than ours do to the fact that they are a net exporter of oil. If we aren't subsidizing oil, how could a country that is a net oil exporter end up paying more for their oil than we do, when we import more than half of our oil?
The UK benefits from the same policies as the US with regards to foreign military aid, etc., but like the other European countries, they pay for it with a petroleum tax. Another example of this is how the European Union (EU) is helping Russia build the Baltic Pipeline System to facilitate selling oil to the European countries (Europe gets a lot of oil from Russia, and wants to be able to get more from there). The EU has committed to helping Russia build the pipeline and other infrastructure costs, in exchange for oil trade agreements (lower prices, and committments to sell certain amounts of oil). This works the same as some of the US's foreign oil practices - exchanging military hardware, military protection, and other costs for oil trade practices. THe difference is, the European countries are paying for this cost out of the petroleum tax, rather than out of income taxes. They are getting lower priced oil from Russia in exchange for their investment in the pipelines and other infrastructure, which keeps their oil price not much higher than that in the US - but unlike us, they are adding the cost of those deals to the at-the-pump price with the petroleum tax.
