The Politics of Energy: Oil & Gas« Thread Started on May 23, 2004, 12:14am »--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Newsgroups: alt.politicsDate: 2004-02-20 14:22:12 PST The Center for Public Integrity has done an expose of the corruptionin the Bush Administration's and Congress' energy bill, which will beup for a vote again this year after it failed last year. TheRepublicans have taken the majority of the energy corporations' money,but the Democrats, too, are complicit. For an excellent read, see thearticle at this linkhttp://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaw ... 5=0Excerpt:[begin quote]Special ReportThe Politics of Energy: Oil & GasHow a gusher of giveaways to oil and gas industry was crafted inCongressBy Bob Williams and Kevin Bogardus(WASHINGTON, December 15, 2003)—The sweeping energy bill now pendingin Congress offers a geyser of new tax breaks and other governmentgoodies for energy companies and related industries. Although the1,200-page bill stalled out in the Senate in November, legislativebackers have sworn to revive it early in the 2004 session of Congress.Not surprisingly, the well-connected oil and gas industry—which hasbeen among the leading contributors to the presidential campaigns ofGeorge W. Bush as well as other Republican candidates and politicalcommittees—stands to reap the biggest bonanza should the legislationeventually become law.Since 1998, oil, gas and related services companies on the Fortune1000 list gave $13.9 million to Republicans, compared to $3.2 millionto Democrats—a ratio of more than four-to-one—according to figurescompiled by the Center for Public Integrity.In many ways, the $30 billion energy legislation is a classic exampleof money, influence and hardball politics at their worst—orbest—depending on your point of view. Sen. John McCain, an ArizonaRepublican who helped Democrats temporarily sink theRepublican-written legislation in November, dryly dubbed it "theNo-Lobbyist-Left-Behind Act."Even the conservative National Review editorialized that the bill was"pages of special-interest giveaways, almost devoid of worthwhilereforms."Indeed, the bill seems to contain something to benefit just aboutevery sector of the energy industry that bothered to ask. There werebillions of dollars of subsidies for clean coal technology forutilities along with revisions to the Clean Air Act that would savethem billions more; for the nuclear industry, there was the renewal ofits federally subsidized catastrophic insurance plan and tax creditsto build up to six new nuclear power plants.But no group would get more than the oil and gas industry, whichsecured everything from the elimination of royalty payments for oilwells on public lands to a legislative shield from an estimated $29billion in lawsuits the petroleum industry is facing over acancer-causing gasoline additive that has leached into the groundwaterof hundreds of communities nationwide. In addition to such big ticketitems, the legislation contains dozens of lesser provisions benefitingoil and gas companies, large and small—many inserted by legislators atthe behest of industry lobbyists or individual companies back home.Overall, the new tax breaks in the latest version of the energy billwere pegged at about $23.5 billion by Congress's Joint Committee onTaxation. There is also another $5.4 billion in grants, subsidies andloan guarantees.But critics say those figures only represent a fraction of the truecost of the legislation.[end quote]There are additional articles in the series about the energy billcorruption at this site:http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/home.asp