Word: oiled
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...OIL-IMPORT...
This tax would pit Northern oil users against Southern producers and has already stirred a cat fight within the energy industry. Nineteen Congressmen from New England, which depends more heavily on imported oil for electricity and home heating than any other region, last week sent Bentsen a letter opposing an import fee. Complains William Whall, a blind Korean War veteran who lives in New Hampshire: "I just converted to oil heat, and now Clinton wants to whack me with an oil-import fee. I can't stand it. It seems like you get taxed if you do and taxed...
...Among oil producers, talk of an import fee has created tension between Big Oil and its smaller brethren. The struggling little guys love the idea because slapping a fee on the 7.8 million bbl. of foreign oil that Americans import each day would boost their own prices and help finance new exploration and production. "People don't realize that we've lost more jobs than the auto, steel and textile industries combined," says an industry lobbyist. Falling prices in the oil patch have cost producers 450,000 jobs, or 60% of the work force, over the past decade...
...Exxon and other behemoths oppose the idea: most get the bulk of their oil from foreign wells. Exxon chairman Lawrence Rawl flatly declares that the fee "wouldn't work" and "would not be in the interest of the economy, the consumer or American industry." Among other drawbacks, critics argue, the fee could violate terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement (by taxing imports from Mexico). "The import fee distorts the market and would be a subsidy for domestic producers," says Ed Rothschild, energy policy director for Citizen Action, the largest U.S. consumer lobby. "Most important, you will never...
This looks like Clinton's No. 2 choice. A 5% sales tax on energy would raise $18 billion a year and cost the average family about $100 a year in higher gasoline and electric bills. But oil and gas producers object that the levy would favor coal companies because their fuel is cheaper and they would therefore pay fewer taxes. Environmentalists complain that a sales tax would fail to sock it to coal and thus do little to help stop global warming. "It misses a tremendous opportunity to do good for the environment at the same time you're meeting...