Have you noticed the price of gas is going down? It is down to $2.35 here and is expected to keep going down. The price of gas went up due to the hurricane damage to both oil platforms in the Gulf and to refineries in the area. Despite all this damage the oil companies are expecting record profits this year.
Between the years 2000 and 2004, oil companies have generated annual profits of $24 billion. In the year 2005 industry is likely to generate profit exceeding the forecast of $63 billion.
That is a profit of more than double for the prior years yet gas prices still went up.
The Bush administration, facing increasing pressure from Congress to ease the impact of record energy costs, today ruled out a special tax on oil profits. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, responding to a question at a Senate hearing about a Deutsche Bank analyst report saying the White House might offer a plan to tax oil companies to help low-income families pay heating bills, said he wouldn't favor any such levy.
The Bush administration, meanwhile, said it expected the industry to invest in refineries to make more gasoline and heating oil.
"These companies are turning in record profits -- they have a responsibility to expand refining capacity," U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman told a Senate Energy Committee hearing on hurricane damage to the industry.
Another thing that is being done is to release more areas for drilling of prior restricted areas. One of these areas is in Alaska where there is a well that is bigger than any found in the Middle East.
With all these profits there was no valid reason to increase prices and prices should go back down dramatically. With the increased supply prices should be down to an all time minimum.
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U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Drilling in waters near Florida gets boost
In a move that could affect Florida's coastline, the U.S. House moved toward easing an offshore drilling ban and opening up an Alaska wildlife refuge.
From Herald Staff and Wire Reports
WASHINGTON - A House committee on Wednesday approved a measure that would clear the way for oil and gas drilling in currently off-limits coastal waters closer to Florida's coast and in an Alaska wildlife refuge.
Supporters of the legislation argued that with natural-gas and crude-oil prices soaring and domestic supplies tight, it is time to end the 24-year federal ban that has blocked energy development along virtually all of the country's coastal waters outside the central and western Gulf of Mexico.
One provision of the bill, which will be wrapped into a massive budget package, would allow states that want drilling within 125 miles of their shores a waiver from the federal moratorium that has been in effect since 1981.
EFFECT ON GULF LEASE
Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., chairman of the House Resources Committee, said the provision would continue to protect Florida by limiting the development of an area in the eastern Gulf known as Lease 181, close to the Florida Panhandle.
The lease, which holds a huge potential for natural-gas development, is not under the general moratorium, but the Interior Department has said it would not allow its development until 2007 under an agreement with Gov. Jeb Bush.
The House provision would open the lease immediately, but bar development of about one-fourth of the area that falls within 125 miles of Florida's coast. Bush has endorsed that provision as a compromise that would give the state a 125-mile buffer zone, but some members of the Florida congressional delegation remain opposed to it.
Rep. Clay Shaw, a Fort Lauderdale Republican and delegation chairman, has not taken a position on this bill, and will schedule a meeting next week for the delegation to take up the issue, said spokeswoman Gail Gitcho.
`BAD PRECEDENT'
Mark Ferrulo, director of the Florida Public Interest Research Group, blasted the bill as ``a bad precedent that will put rigs closer to Florida.''
''And for the first time, the Florida delegation has been fractured on this issue,'' Ferrulo said. ``If they are united, they can defeat this.''
COMMITTEE VOTE
The measure, which also would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska to oil companies, was approved 24-15 by the House Resources Committee in a largely party-line vote. There are no Florida members of the committee.
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