Obama Admin. Oks Domestic Oil Drilling In Alaska; Palin's Turf!

On Today's Weekly Address Video Pres. Obama Announced His Administration's Policies & Plans To Expand Safe Domestic Drilling For Oil In Alaska.

I Bet Sarah Palin Is Probably Fuming & Cursing Up A Storm Right About Now! Ha Ha Ha!


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Sources: White House.gov, Youtube, Google Maps

GOP 2012 = Grand Oil Party & Tax Breaks For Super Rich!!

Continuing To Give Gigantic Unnecessary Tax Breaks To Big Oil Companies Is Why The GOP Wants Pres. Obama Out Of Office!

That & To Keep Receiving Their BIG Checks From Oil Company Lobbyists.

Can You Say Gas Price Gouging??

VOTE OBAMA IN 2012!!




Big Oil's $4 billion tax break in doubt

President Obama repeated his call Tuesday for an end to $4 billion in oil industry tax breaks as gas prices approach $4 a gallon and after a top lawmaker indicated a possible shift in Republican policy.

In a letter to congressional leaders, the president said the oil industry is profitable enough without the tax incentives and that the money should be spent on alternative energy sources and conservation.

"CEOs of the major oil companies have made it clear that high oil prices provide more than enough profit motive to invest in domestic production without special tax breaks," said Obama. "As we work together to reduce our deficits, we simply can't afford these wasteful subsidies."

This week those profits are going to be front and center. BP (BP) is expected to report earnings on Wednesday. Exxon (XOM, Fortune 500) is slated to announce its results on Thursday. Some analysts expect the company's profits to jump 50% from last year. Chevron (CVX, Fortune 500) is scheduled to make its earnings announcement on Friday.

The oil industry and many of its supporters in Congress have long argued that the tax breaks encourage domestic oil production and provide jobs for millions of Americans. Republicans in particular have resisted efforts to eliminate these tax breaks, something many Democrats have been trying to do since at least 2008.

But on Monday night, Speaker of the House John Boehner indicated he might be open to taking some of those breaks off the table.

Drill baby drill won't lower gas prices
"I don't think the big oil companies need to have the oil depletion allowances, but for small, independent oil and gas producers, if they didn't have this, there'd be even less exploration in America than there is today," Boehner said on ABC's World News Tonight. "It's certainly something we need to be looking at."

Depletion allowances let oil companies treat the oil in the ground as capital equipment, and they can write off a certain percentage for each barrel that comes out.

On Tuesday the speaker appeared to backtrack from those comments, with an aid telling CNN that "what the President has suggested so far would simply raise taxes and increase the price at the pump."

Nonetheless, Obama took the chance to pounce, saying in his letter that he was "heartened that Speaker Boehner yesterday expressed openness to eliminating these tax subsidies."

This all comes as the price of gasoline surges above $4 a gallon in many states, making it increasingly difficult politically to defend Big Oil.

As gas prices approach their record highs set in 2008 they are threatening to derail the nation's nascent economic recovery.

The tax breaks in question
The Obama administration is targeting nine tax breaks, according to a paper from the left-leaning Center for American Progress. Four account for the lion's share of the money:

Domestic manufacturing tax deduction: This is the largest single tax break, and would save over $1.7 billion a year if eliminated.

The tax deduction, passed in 2004, is designed to keep factories in the United States. Companies that manufacture here can deduct 9% of their income from operations that are attributed to domestic production.

But some question if that incentive is really appropriate for oil companies. "What are they going to do, move the oil field to the North Sea," said one staffer at the Center for American Progress said in an interview earlier this year.

No, but higher costs in the United States may make them move the drill rigs to the North Sea or some other place.

Eliminating the tax breaks "would actually discourage new energy projects and new hiring in one of the nation's most dependable job-creating industries," the American Petroleum Institute said in a statement at the time, noting the industry currently supports over 9 million jobs.

The percentage depletion allowance: This lets oil companies deduct about 15% of the money generated from a well from its taxes. Eliminating it would save about $1 billion a year.

The deduction essentially lets oil companies treat oil in the ground as capital equipment. For any industry, the value of that equipment can be written down each year.

But critics say oil in the ground is not capital equipment, but a national resource that the oil companies are simply using for their own profit.

The foreign tax credit: This provision gives companies a credit for any taxes they pay to other countries. Altering this tax credit would save about $850 million a year.

Foreign governments can collect money from oil companies through royalties -- fees for depleting their national resources -- and income taxes.

A royalty would be deducted as a cost of doing business, and would likely shave about 30% off a company's tax bill. Categorized as income tax, it is 100% deductible.

Foreign governments long ago grew wise to the U.S. tax code. To reduce costs for everyone involved and attract business, they agreed to call some royalties income taxes, allowing oil companies to take the 100% deduction on a bigger slice of their bill.

Intangible drilling costs: This lets the industry write off about $780 million a year for things like wages, fuel, repairs and hauling costs.

All industries get to write off the costs of doing business, but they must take it over the life of an investment. The oil industry gets to take the drilling credit in the first year.


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Sources: CNN, Google Maps

Obama Lifts Ban On Deep Water Drilling; But Hid BP Spill Truth

Obama Administration Lifts Deep-Water Drilling Moratorium


Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Tuesday that the Obama administration is lifting the Moratorium on deep-water oil drilling it put in place after the Gulf oil spill disaster.

Operators must comply with new rules and regulations in order to get permission to resume drilling, Salazar said.

"There will always be risks associated with deep-water drilling," Salazar said. "We have reached a point where we have significantly reduced those risks."

The six-month moratorium was first issued by Salazar in May after the April 20 explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 people and triggered one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.

When a federal judge overturned the ban and an appeals court agreed, Salazar issued a second ban in June that was scheduled to expire in November.

Critics of the ban, including Republican leaders, Gulf state officials and Gulf coast residents, said it would only hurt oil and gas workers in the already hard-hit coastal communities, where hundreds of jobs were lost because of the disaster.

Salazar said the moratorium provided time to make sure similar accidents involving a failed piece of equipment called a blowout preventer wouldn't occur, and that rig operators were prepared to deal with worst-case scenarios if it did happen.

Under the new requirements, operators must show that their proposed development and exploration plans can deal with potential blowouts and undergo detailed inspections and design reviews of blowout preventers by independent third parties, said Michael Bromwich, the new head of the federal agency that oversees offshore oil drilling.

Bromwich said it might take time for companies to come into full compliance, but he expected some permits for resumed drilling to be approved by the end of the year.

"We will not approve permits without vital supplemental information required by the rules," said Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, a critic of the moratorium, called Tuesday's announcement a good first step but said more was needed to help the region's oil and gas industry get back to work.

"This means that the administration must continue to accelerate the granting of permits in shallow and deep water, and provide greater certainty about the rules and regulations industry must meet," Landrieu said in a statement.

Landrieu has blocked Senate consideration of President Barack Obama's nomination of Jacob Lew to become the new director of the White House Office of Management and Budget to protest the moratorium. Her statement said she would study the situation in coming weeks before deciding whether to lift her hold on the nomination when the Senate returns from recess after the November 2 congressional elections.

An environmental group questioned if enough had been done to prevent another rig explosion and spill like the one that took oil giant BP and the government months to contain.

"Deepwater oil drilling is intrinsically dangerous, as demonstrated by the BP spill, and it's surprising the federal government thinks it has so quickly resolved all the problems that contributed to the spill," said David Guest, an attorney for Earthjustice.

"We learned from this spill that we have only a tiny fraction of what's necessary to control deep water oil spills," Guest said in a statement. "While we've now got some new regulations that address technology and safety, the federal government still hasn't come up with any new regulations addressing oil spill response. We still don't have the equipment or technology to control or contain the oil from a major blowout in the Gulf."

Salazar noted that one reason for the moratorium was because resources needed to respond to the disaster were tied up with the BP spill. Now that the broken well has been capped, those resources are again available in case of another accident, he said.

The moratorium affected 36 operators, half of which were able to continue some level of work such as helping to dig relief tunnels that capped the broken well, Salazar said. Lifting the moratorium means applications for 18 exploratory wells can again move forward, providing they comply with the tougher new regulations and rules, he said.

"The policy position we've articulated today is that we're open for business," Salazar said. "We will be taking applications for drilling in the deep water and we'll be processing those applications under the road map ... created in the last six months."


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Sources: MSNBC, Youtube, Google Maps