For oil, yes. About 44% of oil goes to making gasoline for cars, and 29% goes into making diesel (some of which goes into agricultural uses and machinery other than transportation). Another 7% of oil goes into jet fuel. Only 0.2% of natural gas is used for vehicles.
I tend to think that winds up being protectionism, if the tax is large enough, which is typically bad for the economy over the long term. Fuel exports can also help reduce our trade deficits and bring cash into the U.S. Higher prices at the pump are the best way to persuade people to change their behaviors and stop wasting fossil fuels. We currently export a lot of bio-diesel to European countries. The EU has a tariff on U.S. biodiesel, under the belief that the U.S. is dumping biodiesel in Europe, and U.S. producers are heavily subsidized by the government. So there is a tax on the fuel, but the EU is collecting it. Not good policy by the U.S. gov't. My question would be: should we have a variable gas tax, where the gas tax is lower when gasoline is above $5 per gallon, and increases as the price of gas goes below $4 per gallon? It would not be enough to fix the price of gas, but would reduce the swings in the price of gas. It would also give people a financial reason to conserve gas, which Americans are terrible at. Over the long-term, people would be more careful about buying gas guzzling vehicles they don't really need. America uses 20 million barrels of oil a day in the form of gasoline. We could probably reduce that to 15-16 MM bbl/day with the proper financial incentives and penalties. There is no question that we need to be taxing gasoline more than we have been. The federal gas tax has not been increased in over 30 years--it's still $0.18/gal. Due to inflation and slightly improved gas mileage, the cost to maintain the highways has increased to close to $0.40/gal. If not a variable tax, I would support a gradual fixed gas tax increase of $0.02/gal per quarter ($0.08/yr) until we collect that $0.40/gal to pay for the highways. And even that may not be enough to change behavior. Compensate the working poor for the tax increase by raising the minimum wage by $0.25/hr every year.
There’s no maybe about it. Export controls = protectionism. We absolutely should NOT be subsidizing the use of fossil fuels, and export control is effectively a subsidy on consumption. I’ve had the same take as you for 20 years, that the gas tax should have been hiked to catch up to inflation (after decades of stagnation), fracking was the perfect opportunity to get this done. Obama had the right idea trying to implement higher MPG standards, but even that “better than nothing” policy totally failed as the low cost of gas still drove consumer behavior into larger and less efficient vehicles (observationally the “exceptions” for large trucks and SUV’s must have been so vague as to render the actual MPG standards meaningless). Now people driving these retarded inefficient vehicles are mad about how much it costs to run them, even though they need only look in the mirror to see why we are in this situation. You can’t make this stuff up. Trumpistas have no idea what free market capitalism is, so it’s not surprising the same ones who called for tariffs want to see us horde our supply of oil & gas vs. letting the markets operate. Higher prices is the only thing that changes behavior. If anyone thinks subsidized lower prices or export control is good policy… I hear Venezuela is lovely this time of year.
it isn't hoarding oil, the proposed controls are for refined products only (gasoline, diesel, jet fuel) to prevent price spikes in the event of shortages. California is seeing $6 - $7 gas due to unexpected refinery outages combined with low supplies in storage. it is the Biden admin that is considering export controls on refined products export controls would lower the domestic price and cut refinery profits effectively transferring wealth from the refiners to the consumers. they would penalize our foreign partners. export controls could be applied only when domestic supply slipped below a threshold % typical of what is needed in the event of natural disaster or seasonal refinery transitions or any other foreseeable event that would create a domestic shortage Australia put export controls on nat gas when their nat gas prices began to climb. That made out nat gas prices go up as global supply went down and our capacity to export LNG continues to increase. just fyi
There already is a "tax" on exporting oil: it is the shipping/distribution cost, which is probably minor. If we want to make sure that exported oil/gasoline is taxed, we could tax oil at the producer, refiner, or importer, and not at the gas pumps. We would be taxing all oil products that way (heating oil, asphalt, jet fuel, etc.) and not just gasoline, however.
lease sales to proceed. required by law under the "Inflation Reduction Act" Interior says it is forced to hold canceled offshore oil and gas lease sales (msn.com) "While BOEM has no discretion on whether to hold these lease sales, BOEM is preparing this Supplemental EIS to follow its normal leasing process to the fullest extent possible," it said Thursday alongside the release of the environmental documents, known as draft supplemental environmental impact statements. The release of the documents is the second major oil and gas leasing action to be taken on instruction from the Inflation Reduction Act. Interior reinstated Lease Sale 257, the lone offshore oil and gas lease sale it carried out last year, on Sep. 14. A federal judge had thrown out the lease sale in January after environmental groups successfully challenged its underlying environmental review, but Congress ordered it to be reinstated within 30 days of passage. Interior “ordinarily has discretion regarding whether and when to hold lease sales, the terms of the sales, and whether to accept bids and issue leases received in the sales,” the department said in a court filing last month before the lease was reinstated. Congress’s direction, however, “has prospectively changed existing law as to the tracts at issue in Lease Sale 257,” and the IRA “withdraws Interior’s discretion to do anything other than issue these leases on the terms specified by Congress, irrespective of [the National Environmental Policy Act].”
Of the 35 million acres of land now leased from the government, only about 40% are actively producing. Not sure how more leases will help.
they won't if these are deepwater leases only. with the current uncertainty of the price of oil nobody is going to invest the $100M it takes to develop the deepwater offshore leases. If some of these are shallow and can produce, those might get developed we need to amend the SPR law to allow for long dated contract purchases. If the SPR agrees to take x% of the oil generated from the deepwater wells at a fixed price, then the money will invest to develop the deepwater leases
Some may find this disussion worth watching or listening to. An all inclusive comprehensive honest discussion concerning natural gas, oil, coal, nuclear energy and renewables. There is so much to unpack in this discussion that I had to listen to it twice. Bottom line energy security is a must not just for the comfort of humans but also for industrialization and survival. Europe is currently screwed for years to come due to bad decisions by policy makers. We have to get this right or we will be next. Michael Shellenberger Shellenberger is a leading investigative journalist who has broken major stories on crime and drug policy; homelessness; Amazon deforestation; rising climate resilience; growing eco-anxiety; the U.S. government’s role in the fracking revolution; and climate change and California’s fires. And he testifies and advises governments around the world including in the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. Europe's embrace of renewable energy has made it heavily reliant on Russian gas and oil to fill gaps in the power supply. As Russian President Vladimir Putin's flailing invasion of Ukraine continues, and in the wake of the Nord Stream pipeline ruptures as Europeans approach winter, it's an especially urgent issue. Amid Europe's largest war since World War II, what is happening to the lofty goals of nations around the world to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels? Watch live as Reason's Nick Gillespie and Zach Weissmueller discuss the status of global green energy Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern time with Michael Shellenberger, author of Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.
Obviously, circumstances were different when Trump did that--Russia had not yet invaded Ukraine and stopped the flow of oil and gas to Europe.
If the pubs really want our energy companies to invest, change the SPR rules so that we can refill it with long dated, fixed price contracts and then the investment into new drilling will follow Biden is blamed for downturn in new oil drilling, but fossil fuel companies are the ones hitting pause (msn.com) But energy experts tell CNN recent attempts to open up new parts of the US to oil drilling have failed mainly because of the lack of interest from oil companies themselves, rather than Biden’s “green” policies. New exploration for oil and gas has fallen sharply worldwide this year. Still bruised by an oil-price crash prolonged by the Covid pandemic, fossil fuel companies are now focusing on areas they know will make money, and far less on exploring for new locations to drill. “I would say it’s 60% financial markets are telling them ‘no,’” said Robert McNally, president of energy consulting firm Rapidan Energy Group and an energy adviser to former President George W. Bush. “It’s 30% they’re still fearful of another bust, and then 10%, ‘the politicians, they’re not going to make it easy for me.’” There is perhaps no better evidence of this shift than in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which for decades had been a Republican focus for new oil drilling. Congressional Republicans successfully reopened ANWR to oil drilling in a 2017 bill, but when the lease sale happened in the final days of the Trump administration, only three companies offered bids – one of which was Alaska’s state-owned energy corporation. The other companies that bid ended up canceling their leases this year. The ANWR sale “was a total bust,” said Erik Grafe, an attorney for environmental law firm Earthjustice. “There were no oil majors who bid on leases.”
If oil companies are not interested then open up exploration. If the oil companies are not interested exploration then nothing is lost and the talking point proves factual.
they are holding lease sales and nobody is bidding. It isn't just in the USA either. Climate change melting permafrost changes the economics of trying to extract oil from the Arctic. from the article The ANWR sale “was a total bust,” said Erik Grafe, an attorney for environmental law firm Earthjustice. “There were no oil majors who bid on leases.” .............. Oil and gas companies around the world are driving this trend as they approach new oil and gas exploration tepidly. Total acreage of new oil and gas leases has fallen to “near all-time lows,” according to an analysis from Norwegian energy firm Rystad. Rystad expects a total of 44 global lease sales to be completed in 2022, the lowest level since 2000. As of August, 21 lease sales were completed globally, just half of what was held in the same period the previous year. Experts tell CNN fossil fuel companies are sticking to drilling in regions that are sure bets for oil and gas, like the Permian Basin shown here in Texas. Grafe said big banks and insurance companies are also warning oil and gas companies that drilling in the Arctic could be seriously risky – and in some cases flat out refusing to fund or insure the projects. “There is a lot of recognition by financial institutions that it’s a bad bet to be trying to get oil out of the Arctic in particular,” Grafe said. Part of that is social and political pressure, he said. The other part is that permafrost is melting, making the terrain more unstable and more difficult to drill on.
While you may not be interested in them others might. Sound bytes and talking points are not enough to get a picture and scope of the issues we face. You can simply skip over the post instead of wasting the time spent to complain about something you have no interest in.
The restrictions placed on oil and gas leasing of federal lands and off shore waters. If oil companies are not going to take advantage of that why have them. Remove the talking point and be done with it.
