By Joe Riley
It's hard to turn on a TV or open a newspaper these days and not see a story on how gas prices are pinching Americans' wallets.
Sadly, this issue and its coverage have been unnecessarily politicized by special interests masking their agenda with a simple-sounding solution: open up even more of our public lands for more oil drilling.
Unfortunately, that incorrect conclusion does nothing to solve the problem of high gas prices. And while some members of Congress have bought into the fallacy that lowering gas prices can be accomplished by more drilling, I believe that Americans are smarter than this.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to note that gas prices are high even as U.S. oil drilling is at its highest level in eight years. Clearly, we are drilling — a lot. And clearly, our high rate of drilling has not lowered prices.
Instead, near-record levels for drilling and gas prices have helped the big five oil companies earn a record $137 billion in profits in 2011. Don't get me wrong — as a small business owner, I believe companies deserve to make profits. But, I also believe that people and companies should pay their fair share.
That's why it's galling to learn that despite earning record profits, the oil industry enjoys a raft of sweet tax breaks, some of them going back a century. A recent study by the non-partisan Taxpayers for Common Sense calculated that between 2011 and 2015, the oil and gas industry is projected to enjoy $55 billion in tax breaks designed specifically for their industry.
If you haven't figured it out yet, that's $55 billion in taxes oil and gas companies should be paying, but you and I are getting stuck with the bill.
We're paying the oil companies twice — once at the pump and once on Tax Day.
There is a movement afoot in Congress to finally get oil companies to pay their fair share. In fact, last month Senators Bingaman and Udall voted to repeal $4 billion annually in subsidies to the oil and gas industry but there were not enough votes to override the filibuster against this bill.
If you're worried about gas prices increasing as a result of repealing oil and gas tax breaks, don't be.
A 2011 Congressional Research Service report found that the Senate's proposed repeal of oil and gas tax breaks would have little to no impact on prices. In fact, a recent Associated Press analysis found that there is absolutely no correlation between U.S. oil production and the price at the pump. Opening up more areas of our public lands for oil production will not bring gas prices down. Oil and gas companies already have more than 7,000 approved drilling permits for federal lands that remain unused, according to recent BLM data.
The problem is not too little production; it's too much profiteering. The oil companies, using an army of lobbyists and treasure chests of political donations, have rigged the system to favor their own profits over our interests.
I'm not going to say that lowering gas prices isn't a complex problem. What I am saying is that a nice start would be to investigate the connections between high gas prices, oil-company tax breaks and the profits these companies make. We must demand accountability from the oil companies and get them to pay their fair share.
That's something I hope we can all agree on.
Joe Riley is the owner of Eco Energy and Auditing
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