$10 a barrel

[cilla4progress]

Obama wants to tax Big Oil and spend the money on green transportation projects

The United States isn’t exactly known for its mass transportation. In all but the biggest American cities — and even in some of those — the only thing resembling public transit is the school bus. But in his final years in office, President Obama hopes to change this. Or at least start talking about it.

Politico reports that when Obama proposes the final budget of his presidency, it will call for spending more than $300 billion over the next decade to fund carbon-reducing transit projects, including subways, buses, light rail, freight rail, and a big expansion of high-speed rail, as well as potentially-less-carbon-reducing projects like self-driving cars.

And how does Obama propose to pay for it? With a $10 “fee” on every barrel of oil sold. In theory, this fee would be levied on oil companies, but even the White House acknowledges that it would probably be passed right down to consumers. “This is a per-barrel fee on oil paid for by oil companies,” White House economic adviser Jeff Zients said Thursday. “So they’re the ones paying the fee. We recognize that oil companies will likely pass on some of these costs.”

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[juxtaposed]

1. sounds a lot like what Bernie would do!! Go for it.

[pampango]

2. If we are ever going to tax oil significantly now is the time to do it.

Of course, for many the best time to tax oil is not when its price is high or low but "some time in the future".

[postulater]

3. How about just making the oil companies pay for repairing the damage they do.

That should create about a million green jobs.

[Travis_0004]

4. Thats more than doubling of the tax

Currently 18 cents a gallon is the tax.

He wants to add an additional 24 cents.

Ill be honest, 5-7 bucks wont affect me, but I dont live paycheck to paycheck. Seems like this tax is highly regressive.

[-none]

6. This is a tax on crude oil, not gasoline.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

7. The impact on gasoline will be higher per gallon

Refineries in the United States produced an average of about 12 gallons of diesel fuel and 19 gallons of gasoline from one barrel (42 gallons) of crude oil in 2014. Many other petroleum products are also refined from crude oil. Refinery yields of individual products vary from month to month as refiners focus operations to meet demand for different products and to maximize profits.

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=327&t=9

Editing because a gallon of gasoline is made of 90% of a gallon of gasoline and 10% of a gallon of ethanol. So, 90 percent of $10 gas on 42 gallons of crude, oh, forget it.

[hunter]

18. That 12 + 19 gallon statistic is rather slippery, as is all oil industry accounting.

There's quite a lot of natural gas and natural gas liquids making its way into gasoline.

With the addition of hydrogen derived from inexpensive natural gas it's possible to make more than 42 gallons of gasoline, diesel, and feedstocks for plastic from a single barrel of oil.

Refineries produce a mix of products. Gasoline has been a largely synthetic product for many years.

[Travis_0004]

11. Where does gasoline come from?

[Octafish]

12. From Heaven

Not pennies. Petrotrillions.

[-none]

13. The crude oil in the barrel

[FLPanhandle]

5. Perfect

Not only will it reduce the consumption of oil, but will increase the comparative business case of green energy projects.

Well done Obama.

[Ex Lurker]

8. Dead on arrival and will give the GOP a club to use on the Democratic nominee

"So tell us, Ms Clintion/Mr Sanders, are you for or against Obama's massive tax increase on gasoline?"

[gvstn]

10. Oil/gas is a racket.

When the Iraq war started we went from $2/gallon to $4+/gallon. Did it suddenly cost that much more to produce a gallon of gas? Just Wall Stret ripping people off. Tax the hell out of it after you set a fair price for its production.

[Travis_0004]

17. taxing wont change the profit

It will just make it more expensive.

Some gas can be produced cheaply, some is more expensive to drill. When prices are high, everybody is drilling, when prices drop, some oil fields where gas is too expensive to drill shut down. If you add a tax, you will increase the price consumers pay but not much else.

Not sure how you set a fair price on a global market.

[gvstn]

20. I may be naive.

But I thought if it costs you 80 cents to produce a gallon of gas, you add 40 cents for overhead and profit. You don't add $3 to the 80 cents it actually costs. That is what I consider a fair price, not some speculative one, based on Wall Street trying to make lots of money.

[Travis_0004]

21. The problem is its a global market

If you limit the price, and I can sell oil to China for 100 a barrell, or the US for 50, nobody will sell to the US.

Then we will have shortages, and there will be rationing, or more likely gas stations would raise their prices to adjust for supply and demand, and prices would be even higher as there is not enough to go around.

[madokie]

9. Personally

I'd rather we tax these rich assholes that are making the lives a living hell for so many Americans. This tax will be paid by you and I at the pump, many times over I might add.

Jeeze when is the President going to start taking our side for once. It ain't going to happen or he would have already done it.

[bigwillq]

14. Good post

[Amishman]

16. this would be a regressive tax

it would get passed on to the common folks

instead tax oil commodity trading with an exception for contracts that result in physical delivery. Heck do it for all commodities, tax wall street for messing with the price of raw materials and making things more expensive for the rest of us. Either money will be reclaimed from wall street or big money gets out of commodities trading. Either way we win.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

19. I have mixed feelings,

I think it's a great idea in principle, but I think most of the money would be squandered on bullshit projects.

Bullshit like this:



Orange County's Crystal Cathedral for street preachers