The Wall Street Journal today reports that the major oil companies successfully “beat back” attempts by Congress to have oil companies pay their fair share in taxes:
Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips beat back an attempt by senators to raise their taxes by nearly $6 billion.
The Senate version of the bill at one point included a provision that would have cost the five largest oil companies — companies with average daily production of 500,000 barrels; gross receipts of more than $1 billion dollars in 2005 and an ownership in a refinery of 15% or more — about $5 billion by changing how they account for oil inventory. House Republicans dropped the provision from the final version of the bill.
A separate Senate measure would have stripped $700 million in tax incentives for large oil companies to explore for oil and gas. That provision, too, was dropped from the compromise bill that emerged from House-Senate negotiations.
Looks like Big Oil has been putting their record profits to good use.
PoliticalMoneyLine has a new analysis on how they’ve been spending their money. In 2005, the top ten oil companies spent a whopping $33,173,092 lobbying Congress and the Bush administration. The numbers are broken down by company below:
| Oil Company | Amount Spent |
| ChevronTexaco | $8,550,000 |
| ExxonMobil | $7,140,000 |
| ConocoPhillips | $5,098,084 |
| Marathon | $4,290,000 |
| BP | $2,880,000 |
| Occidental | $2,042,177 |
| Shell | $1,478,831 |
| Ashland | $904,000 |
| Sunoco | $540,000 |
| Anadarko | $250,000 |
| TOTAL | $33,173,092 |
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