The problem is that somebody found out that oil people....the rig workers, the doodle-buggers, the wildcatters, the royalty holders, the refiners, the truckers, the pipeliners, the roughnecks are not saints. Most of them are not even lower level acolytes.
Therefore, people who know nothing about the oil business like to blame the oil companies for every real and imagined difficulty in their lives. And, if a person is especially petty and self-absorbed, he particularly resents the oil companies violating the compact they had about giving anybody and everybody fuel for whatever price the buyer wanted to pay.
Oreally raves on and on, and it has to be that he is either willfully ignorant of the nature of the entire industry, or that he is a closet socialist. The top 20 oil and gas explorers, producers, distillers, transporters, and end-marketters pay over 150,000,000,000 dollars in local, State, and central government taxes each year. Royalty holders pay another 22,000,000,000 dollars, each year is such taxes. B0n Jovi pays 150 dollars of real estate taxes in New Jersey because of exemptions he qualifies for because he has some bee-hives on his properties....properties that have several million dollars of value. El Gringo Viejo pays more than that in McAllen school taxes just on a couple of old gas wells.
The oil business pays over one hundred and seventy-two billion dollars in various taxes last year. And, they provide the cheapest and best gasoline in the world to its clients in America. The solution to the energy problem is not Solyndra, or autos with solar powered propellers, or algae oil. The solution is to bind the three nations of the North American Continent into a "cartel'' of the good, and agree to produce and deliver to ourselves first and then sell our surplus to other markets. The oil and gas industry would make good money on that market, albeit a little less, and the prices would remain low because of the lower cost of transportation.
Natural gas is already so cheap some people are trying to figure out how to feed it to their children without blowing them up, or having them float off into the blue.
We are off early in the morning tomorrow. We return on Saturday, the Lord willing and the Devil not objecting.
El Gringo Viejo
