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Originally Posted by KILLER_CLOWN
Time to open up Alaska.
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Drilling here won't do anything for the American consumer except the advantage of a weenie drop-in-the-bucket addition to the international market. The US leases oil-drilling areas to the international oil companies. The government used to make money off of the leases until the Bush admin relaxed the royalty payment obligations. Then we started accepting "royalties-in-kind" of oil as payment that mostly goes into our strategic reserve. The oil companies would just suck out the oil & slap it on the international market - the consumer would see zero difference. Why should the oil companies share the spoils with you? - they got it made! Heck - Exxon made like $45 billion in profits in 2009 & paid
ZERO federal taxes on the bounty. We taxpayers are even tolerating humongous tax subsidies going to the oil industry. Republicans slammed Obama for suggesting that we reduce the subsidies by $20 billion. Dunno why people think that the oil companies will all of a sudden start sharing the bounty with domestic car-drivers just because they'll suck oil out of fields closer to the US.