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 CompanyAmount SpentChevronTexaco$8,550,000ExxonMobil$7,140,000ConocoPhillips$5,098,084Marathon$4,290,000BP$2,880,000Occidental$2,042,177Shell$1,478,831Ashland$904,000Sunoco$540,000Anadarko$250,000TOTAL$33,173,092