Obama slams McCain over oil company tax breaks
By MIKE GLOVER, Associated Press Writer
Fri Aug 1, 2:14 AM ET
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama seized on a record oil company profit to argue that rival John McCain offers only tax breaks for Big Oil and "short-term gimmicks" to consumers struggling with soaring gasoline prices.
The Illinois senator quickly incorporated news of Exxon Mobil's nearly $12 billion quarterly profit into his remarks at a town hall meeting here.
"No U.S. corporation ever made that much in a quarter," Obama said. "But while Big Oil is making record profits, you are paying record prices at the pump and our economy is leaving working people behind."
McCain's response, Obama said, is to propose a corporate tax plan that would give "$4 billion each year to the oil companies, including $1.2 billion for Exxon Mobil alone" and a gas tax holiday that Obama said would only "pad oil company profits and save you — at best — half a tank of gas" over an entire summer.
In recent days, Obama has complained that McCain is offering little of substance to voters and does little more than attack.
"All those negative ads he's running won't do a thing to lower your gas prices or lift up the debate in this country," Obama said.
As the campaign sought to contrast energy problems with McCain's campaign tactics, Obama joked about a new McCain commercial that calls the Democrat the biggest celebrity in the world while showing images of pop culture celebrities Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.
"So far all we've been hearing about is Paris Hilton," said Obama. "I do have to ask my opponent: Is that the best you can do? Is that what this election is really all about? Is that worthy of the American people."
In response, the McCain campaign labeled Obama's criticism a "hypocritical political attack," and cited his vote in 2005 for an energy bill backed by President Bush. McCain opposed the legislation.
The two rivals have clear differences on energy policy. McCain favors a gas tax "holiday" for the summer driving season and wants to expand offshore drilling. Obama opposes both and instead advocates longer term assistance to develop alternative energy sources.
"That's how America is going to free itself from our dependence on foreign oil — not through short-term gimmicks, but through a real long-term commitment to transform our energy sector," Obama said.
Developing alternative energy is a big issue throughout the upper Midwest, a crucial swing region in this year's election.
While the exchanges between Obama and McCain have been growing sharper, he said, "I'm not interested in getting into a tit-for-tat, that's not going to lower your gas prices."
Before the town hall meeting, Obama met with victims of this summer's flooding to assure them he would push for rapid assistance to rebuild in a city that suffered $1 billion in flood damage.
"This city is going to rebuild," said Obama. "People are hurting, people are suffering. We need to make sure these communities have the assistance they need in a timely fashion."
Why Isn't Big Oil Drilling More? Look At The Profits.
By Bill Scher
July 31st, 2008 - 2:07pm ET
Today, ExxonMobil reported that it broke its own record for highest corporate profit in a quarter: $11.68 billion. The rest of the Big Oil posse is rocking and rolling as well: Shell's profits are up 33%, BP is up 28% and ConocoPhillips is up 13%.
So in case you didn't understand why Big Oil isn't drilling in the 68 million acres where they already have leases, now you can see.
Why ramp up production, invest in more refinery capacity, and rush more oil on to the market in hopes of lowering prices for consumers, when you're already making as much money as ever has been made in history.
As I said earlier in the week: tight supply + high gas prices = good times for Big Oil.
So long as we consumers don't have any other energy choices except for buying huge amounts of increasingly expensive oil.
So, we can keep starving investment in clean energy. We can keep propping up Big Oil with tax giveaways. We can give them more leases off our coasts -- where there's so little oil it can't do anything to significantly lower prices.
But don't expect Big Oil to do anything different to help us out. Don't expect Big Oil to quickly use those leases, and rush to get those drops of coastal oil.
Because they're doing just fine as things are.
We can keep our energy policy in Big Oil's hands, or we can force Big Oil to compete with clean energy so we'll have real choices.
And that's our choiceMcCain Bets on Off Shore Drilling
GOP Hopeful Trades California for a Shot at the Heartland
**Editor's Note: This piece has been updated to include the results of a new poll released July 30.
On a January afternoon in 1969, Paradise was violated and the modern environmental movement was born.
Six miles off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif., a “blowout” erupted below a Union Oil Co. platform, spewing crude oil from drilling-induced cracks in the Santa Barbara Channel floor.
It took almost two weeks to cap the leak and, before it was plugged, the oil spill had grown to more than 3 million gallons. It spread across 800 square miles of ocean, spoiling more than 35 miles of Southern California’s coast.
Dead and injured sea animals and birds washed up along the beaches, covered in the black goo. Images of the devastation, transmitted around the world, helped galvanize environmentalists and triggered the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air Act.
In the wake of Santa Barbara’s calamity, the U.S. president, a Republican and a California native, observed, “What is involved is the use of our resources of the sea and of the land in a more effective way and with more concern for preserving the beauty and the natural resources that are so important to any kind of society that we want for the future. The Santa Barbara incident,” Richard M. Nixon concluded, “has frankly touched the conscience of the American people.”
Offshore oil drilling became a “third rail issue” in California politics—touch it and you die. It’s remained so for nearly 40 years— particularly for state Democrats, who rely on environmentalists as a key constituency. And, by-and-large, the nation went along.
Then, with skyrocketing oil and gas prices, and increasing economic distress, President George W. Bush announced he was lifting the presidential moratorium on offshore drilling. He called on Congress to lift its ban as well. Offshore oil drilling has resurfaced as a hot-button issue on the national level. It is an issue that divides voters and the two presidential candidates.
When the 2008 campaign began, both Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama opposed offshore drilling. Mc Cain had also opposed it in his unsuccessful 2000 presidential bid. Both McCain and Obama were—somewhat successfully — wooing environmentalists. McCain’s green energy stand was one way he could distance himself from an extraordinarily unpopular president.
Why then did McCain reverse himself and call for lifting offshore drilling restrictions —even before Bush lifted the presidential ban? His switch angered environmental groups he’d been wooing for years. In California, his switch irked many moderate Republicans, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had endorsed McCain, but who roundly criticized the Arizona senator’s new take on offshore drilling.
Taking a calculated risk that voter anger about high fuel prices would trump environmentalism in today’s economy, McCain positioned himself alongside to Bush on an issue that independents and Democrats -- as well as many suburban Republicans -- care about; McCain gambled on giving Obama an opening to link him to “the same misguided approach backed by President Bush,” as well as to “big oil companies.”
But McCain’s risk could pay off. Essentially, McCain has traded any likelihood of taking California in November -- a pie-in-the-sky assumption about this blue state, anyway -- for the possibility of gaining votes in crucial Heartland states, like Michigan and Ohio
In pivotal Florida, for example, Democrats and Republicans have long been united in their opposition to offshore drilling. But there now appears to be a shift in opinion favorable to McCain’s new stance. The state’s Republican governor, Charlie Crist, a V.P. prospect, changed sides to support McCain. In addition, a just-released Rasmussen survey shows that 57 percent of Florida voters now favor of offshore drilling, while only 32 percent do not. A slim majority of voters (51 percent) in this battleground state think reducing gas prices is more important than protecting the environment.
National polls reveal that voters might be ready to endorse lifting the ban. A Gallup poll in mid-May showed that 57 percent of respondents favored “[a]llowing oil drilling in U.S. coastal and wilderness areas now off-limits to oil exploration.” Tellingly, there were significant partisan differences in support. Only 38 percent of Democrats agreed with this, compared to 80 percent of Republicans and 56 percent of those coveted independent voters.
A Rasmussen survey from June--before McCain announced his support--showed 67 percent of voters now support oil drilling off the coasts of California, Florida and other states. Only 18 percent disagree.
This survey, too, revealed a significant partisan divide -- 85 percent of Republicans favor offshore drilling, compared to 57 percent of Democrats and 60 percent of independent voters.
In California, on the other hand, a statewide Field Poll as recently as early July shows voters “remain opposed to the idea of allowing oil companies to drill more oil and gas wells along the California coastline.“ Fifty-one percent of Californians are opposed, and 43 percent approve. However, statewide opposition is down from a high of 62 percent in 1990 and 56 percent in 2001 and 2005.
There are partisan differences here, too. Republicans approve offshore drilling by 63 percent -- but that’s 17 points lower than their approval nationally. Democrats disapprove 61 percent to 31 percent (nationally their approval registers slightly higher, at 39 percent). Significantly, in the Golden State, 58 percent of independents disapprove of offshore drilling -- nationally that figure is 43 percent.
**However, a just-released survey by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) shows that Californians' support for offshore oil drilling has suddenly increased to 51 percent (up from 41 percent in 2007). According to the PPIC analysis, it's "the first time since 2003, when PPIC first posed the question, that more Californians favor offshore drilling than oppose it (45 percent), a shift caused in large part by a surge in support among Republicans (77 percent, up from 60 percent)." Six of 10 Democrats and half of independents still oppose offshore oil drilling to meet our energy needs. This shift in voter opinion, according to PPIC, is "one of many reactions to soaring gas prices."
Yet none of these numbers tell the entire story. They cannot gauge the intensity of public opinion. In the end, offshore oil drilling is an issue not unlike gun control. The passion is still on the side of its opponents. That could mobilize the environmental movement against McCain come the fall. For other voters the issue may have less importance, and be less motivating.
Both sides now think they can capitalize on the issue of oil drilling. Democrats are looking to gain ground with a flurry of ads attacking Republicans up and down the ballot for bedding down politically with Big Oil. At the same time, McCain is planning to assail the Democrats' inaction on oil independence, staging photo ops in front of oil wells.
It remains to be seen which strategy — if either — will pay political dividends. But it’s hard to imagine McCain striking an electoral gusher with his new embrace of offshore drilling for oil independence.
Sherry Bebitch Jeffe is a senior scholar at the University of Southern California's School of Policy, Planning and Development.
McCain's Oil Drilling Hoax
Joe Conason
Thu Jul 31, 3:00 AM ET
Forced to cancel a planned visit to an oil platform off the Mississippi coast last week because of inclement weather — and the untimely leaking of hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil by a shipwreck in the vicinity — John McCain finally got his photo op at a Bakersfield derrick on July 28. Speaking on site, the Arizona senator delivered extraordinarily good news to the beleaguered gasoline-consuming public as he explained why we must drill offshore.
Based on briefings that Sen. McCain says he received from "the oil producers," he said, "There are some instances [that] within a matter of months they could be getting additional oil. In some cases, it would be a matter of a year. In some cases it could take longer than that, depending on the location and whether you use existing rigs or you have to install new rigs, but there's abundant resources in the view of the people who are in the business that could be exploited within a period of months."
The prospect of significant new petroleum resources that could be available so soon would be excellent news — aside from the obvious impact of burning still more oil — if only what the senator said was true. But what he said actually made no sense whatsoever, as a statement about the future development of domestic oil, the alleged need to increase drilling off our coasts or the resources that such drilling might produce. So let's unpack that McCain statement (which was overshadowed by the news that his dermatologist had just removed a small lesion from the 71-year-old melanoma survivor's right cheek).
It may be true that "existing rigs" could produce additional barrels of domestic oil immediately, whether on land or in the ocean, as Sen. McCain suggests. If so, he might want to ask his friends in the oil business why those rigs aren't producing more oil now, at prices above $120 a barrel. An existing rig by definition is a rig that is operating legally on property already leased for exploration — and can produce oil unencumbered by any environmental constraints on drilling. In case the senator doesn't understand, an existing rig is where someone has already drilled a well.
Where companies would have to install new rigs, the question is whether a lease already exists or whether the government would have to grant a new lease. New drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf would mean new leases that are now illegal.
But as the Associated Press reported last month, nearly 75 percent of the existing leases on federal lands held by petroleum companies are currently producing no oil. Those companies today hold nearly 30 million acres dormant, according to the AP. Nobody in the federal government even knows whether any exploration has taken place over the past decade.
Perhaps Sen. McCain should ask his friends in the industry why they aren't exploring or producing on the leases they already control. A truthful answer would be that those leases count as financial assets whether productive or not — and adding to them enhances an oil firm's bottom line.
The senator should also ask an oil company executive to step forward and explain how any new offshore oil lease can produce petroleum within the next few months or even a year. If that is possible, then the Department of Energy analysis of future domestic oil production is scandalously wrong. The department's Energy Information Agency released a study last year predicting that granting access to new offshore leases would not begin to produce any actual oil until around 2020, and would have no "significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030," if ever.
As the Republican presidential nominee — and a putative environmentalist — he suddenly seems eager to exploit voter discontent over high gasoline prices to promote offshore drilling. He may even think he can ride the energy crisis into the White House.
Voters may or may not believe the Senator's silly claims about his "briefings" from oilmen, which mainly seem to have involved handing over a fat check. Indeed, so far the only beneficiary of his offshore drilling offensive is the McCain presidential war chest. The Washington Post recently reported that the oil industry "gushed money after [his] reversal on oil drilling" last month.
They never gave him that kind of money when he talked straight.
Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer (www.observer.com). To find out more about Joe Conason, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
McCain's Oil Money Gusher Spreads Cross Country
In fact, no fewer than 85 Texas-based donors connected to the oil and gas industries gave $1,214,100 to McCain in June, with 73 percent of those donations occurring in the second half of the month. But it wasn't just Texas oil donors getting into gear. Our new report, It's A Gusher, released today by my organization, Campaign Money Watch, reveals that oil executives from around the nation cheered McCain's policy reversal by opening their checkbooks.
The most egregious example? Within about a week of McCain's reversal on offshore drilling, ten Hess executives or family members from New York and New Jersey maxed out to the RNC by writing identical $28,500 checks, for a total of $285,000.
The oil money gushed in from coast to coast, with donations to McCain's victory fund from:
• Gary and Carolyn Chouest ($100,000) from Louisiana. Gary Chouest is CEO of Edison Chouest Offshore
• Stephen Chazen ($5,000) from California, who works for Occidental Petroleum
• Frederic Hamilton ($39,300) from Colorado, the CEO of Hamilton Oil Company
• Onajite Okoloko ($30,000) from Florida, the CEO of Ocean and Oil Services
• Rich and Ann Calhoon ($71,600) from Mississippi. Rich Calhoon is CEO of Pruet Oil.
These increasingly cozy ties between McCain and big oil should come as no surprise, since the Straight Talk Express is full of oil lobbyists.
Campaign Money Watch found that 33 staffers or fundraisers on the McCain campaign have earned $19.3 million in lobbying fees from at least 30 oil and gas industry corporations and associations. Just four top lobbyists for McCain -- Wayne Berman, Charlie Black, John Green, and Steve Phillips -- account for $11.5 million of that total.
Exxon Mobil, which set a record today for the largest quarterly profit by any U.S. corporation, has paid $1.26 million to lobbyists currently working on the McCain campaign.
While economists agree that offshore drilling will have no effect on gas prices for years -- McCain admitted in June that any effect would be primarily psychological -- it is an easy way to boost the already outrageous profits of these oil companies and their executives.
The long and short of it is this:
John McCain's position won't reduce gas prices anytime soon, but it will increase the oil companies' profits. These lobbyists and the donors from Big Oil may want you to believe they think John McCain is the best candidate for the country, but what is really happening is that their financial future is at stake. He's the best candidate for Big Oil. That's why the checkbooks are out.
$236 Per American Driver: Big Oil’s U.S. Profits From The Last Year
Sky-high gas prices mean hardship for American families but huge profits for big oil companies.
According to a new study from the Center for American Progress Action Fund, their U.S. profits from the last 12 months were the equivalent to $236 from every single person with a drivers license in America.
In the past year, oil and gasoline prices have broken all records. Oil reached $147 a barrel, and gasoline hit a new high of $4.11 a gallon earlier this month. Oil prices were 90 percent higher over the past three months than they were a year ago.
Today, Exxon Mobil announced that they had made $11.7 billion in the last three months, the most profitable quarter ever for an American company.
The other big five oil companies announced earnings 26% higher than this same period last year, putting them on track to break last year’s record profits.
High prices may be good for oil company profits, but they’re bad news for American families. Higher gasoline prices are costing ordinary families hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars a year.
In the past 12 months, the five largest oil companies have earned $148 billion world wide, including an estimated $47 billion in the United States. To put these numbers in perspective: if these U.S. profits were distributed evenly among American drivers, it would equal about $236 per driver.
For more information, check out the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s full report here.
UPDATE: Chevron has since released their Q2 2008 profits: $5.98 billion in the last three months, up 11% from the same period last year. While slightly less than predicted in our report, it doesn’t significantly change the per-driver share of the five companies’ U.S. profits over the past year which remains approximately $236 per American driver.
44 oil spills found in southeast Louisiana
Largest is nearly 4 million gallons, most big ones are on Mississippi River
More than 500 specialists are working to clean up 44 oil spills ranging from several hundred gallons to nearly 4 million gallons, the U.S. Coast Guard said in an assessment that goes far beyond initial reports of just two significant spills.
The report comes nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, and reflects the fact that the Coast Guard and other agencies are able to only now tackle environmental problems since the search and rescue effort is winding down.
The Coast Guard estimates more than 7 million gallons of oil were spilled from industrial plants, storage depots and other facilities around southeast Louisiana.
That is about two-thirds as much oil as spilled from the Exxon Valdez tanker in 1989. But unlike the oil from the Valdez, which poured from a single source, these oil spills are scattered at sites throughout southeast Louisiana.
The oil could threaten the region’s fragile coastal marshes, but three-quarters of it was not posing a danger to wetlands, the Coast Guard said, noting that more than 1.3 million gallons had evaporated or dispersed.
Crews had recovered nearly 2 million gallons and had contained another 2.3 million gallons behind booms and other barriers, the Coast Guard said.
Nearly all of the oil leaked near the Mississippi River south of New Orleans and was contained by earthenberms designed for that purpose, said Capt. Frank Paskewich, federal on-scene coordinator for the Coast Guard. Any oil that escaped the berms flowed inland, away from the river levees. Only a few minor oil sheens, thin enough to evaporate in the sun, have appeared on the river so far, he said, and they probably came from small watercraft that sank in the storm.
None of the leaks sent oil directly into the Mississippi River, he said. The leaks involved either ruptured tanks or pipelines protected by levees.
State, activists concerned
But the state Department of Environmental Quality emphasized that the numbers are only estimates and that it’s too early to tell how effective the cleanup is.
“Those are just estimates as is everything at this point,” department spokeswoman Jean Kelly told MSNBC.com on Friday. “You don’t know where it all went.”
To suggest that the vast majority of the oil has been cleaned up “is ludicrous if you’ve seen the coast,” she added.
The nonprofit Louisiana Environmental Action Network said it remains concerned given how late the cleanup began and what’s known so far.
“We’re very concerned,” executive director Marylee Orr told MSNBC.com. “We’re watching the limited data that has come out.”
Of particular concern is a spill in Meraux, a town just outside New Orleans on the Mississippi River, where oil mixed with floodwaters and sediment to submerge hundreds of homes.
Murphy Oil, which owns the refinery where the spill occurred, said Friday that two class action lawsuits were filed in federal court against the company seeking damages for residents.
The company said the lawsuits, filed in the U.S. Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, are seeking damages for residents of St. Bernard Parish in southeast Louisiana, parts of which were covered in oil and sludge after the spill.
Orr said people calling to report problems have been urged to document them until remediation begins.
The combination of sewage, chemicals, oil and other pollutants is an environmental disaster of “epic proportions,” Orr said.
No one knows what that “toxic gumbo does to the human body when its exposed at the same time.”
In the case of oil spills, the state's Department of Environmental Quality had reported just two significant cases, the one in Meraux and another in Venice.
Below are the largest known spills, most of them along the Mississippi River south of New Orleans, along with estimates provided by the Coast Guard.
Major spills (over 100,000 gallons)
Bass Enterprises Production Company (Cox Bay): About 3.78 million gallons discharged, of which 960,000 gallons were recovered, 2 million gallons were contained and 982,000 gallons evaporated.
Shell (Pilot Town): About 1.05 million gallons discharged, of which about 718,000 gallons were recovered, 129,000 were contained and 105,000 gallons evaporated or dispersed. Some 87,000 gallons have not been contained.
Chevron (Empire): About 991,000 gallons were released, of which 983,000 gallons were naturally dispersed or evaporated, 4,000 gallons were recovered and 3,600 gallons were contained.
Murphy Oil Corporation (Meraux): About 819,000 gallons discharged, of which 305,000 were recovered, 196,000 gallons were contained and 312,000 gallons evaporated. Some 6,000 gallons were not recovered.
Bass Enterprises (Point a la Hache): About 461,000 gallons of oil discharged, of which half was contained and half evaporated.
Medium spills (10,000 to 100,000 gallons)
Chevron (Port Fourchon): About 53,000 gallons were released, of which 21,000 gallons were naturally dispersed, 26,000 gallons were recovered and 420 gallons were contained.
Venice Energy Services Company (Venice): About 840,000 gallons of potential discharge are enclosed in bermed and boomed area, but only 25,000 gallons were actually discharged, of which 4,800 gallons were recovered.
Shell Pipeline Oil (Nairn): About 13,440 gallons discharged, of which 126 gallons were recovered, 2,940 gallons were contained and 10,500 gallons reached shoreline.
Sundown Energy (West Potash): About 13,000 gallons discharged, of which 153 gallons were recovered, 2,000 gallons were contained, and 5,000 gallons reached shoreline.
Offshore oil
As for oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico, Paskewich said the Coast Guard has fielded no reports of offshore spills there, though leaks could spring when the thousands of oil platforms and hundreds of miles of pipeline are restarted. Last year, Hurricane Ivan was responsible for oil spills in the Gulf, he said.
Paskewich dismissed suggestions by an environmental advocacy group that satellite photos showed some 7,000 square miles of oil floating in the Gulf, saying numerous flyovers revealed only minor sheening.
Skytruth, a group that uses satellite imagery to track environmental damage, says extensive oil slicks are visible in areas of the Gulf raked by hurricane-force winds.
“Daily overflights are being conducted to find the real truth of what’s going on,” Paskewich told Reuters. “As for now, I am confident that we have not received any reports of significant oil spills offshore.”
Posted July 31, 2008 | 03:08 PM (EST)
David Donnelly