more Rhetoric vs Reality

RHETORIC: U.S. oil companies have refused to invest in alternative energy and other clean technologies.

REALITY: The U.S. oil and natural gas industry invested almost $100 billion between 2000 and 2005 in emerging energy technologies, including $12 billion in non-hydrocarbons and $42 billion in greenhouse gas emission mitigation technologies from 2000 to 2006.

RHETORIC: Oil companies are making record profits and we should impose a windfall profits tax on them.

REALITY: While company profits are large in dollar terms, the earnings of oil companies aren’t much higher than those of the S&P Industrials. Oil and natural gas industry profits are in line with other man...

more Rhetoric vs Reality

RHETORIC: U.S. oil companies have refused to invest in alternative energy and other clean technologies.

REALITY: The U.S. oil and natural gas industry invested almost $100 billion between 2000 and 2005 in emerging energy technologies, including $12 billion in non-hydrocarbons and $42 billion in greenhouse gas emission mitigation technologies from 2000 to 2006.

RHETORIC: Oil companies are making record profits and we should impose a windfall profits tax on them.

REALITY: While company profits are large in dollar terms, the earnings of oil companies aren’t much higher than those of the S&P Industrials. Oil and natural gas industry profits are in line with other manufacturing industries. And there is no credible evidence that raising taxes on them would lower fuel prices.

RHETORIC: It’s time to end tax breaks for Big Oil and make these companies pay their fair share in taxes.

REALITY: Oil companies already pay on average almost twice as much in income taxes as other U.S. manufacturing companies – 40.7 percent, as a share of net income before income taxes, compared with 22.1 percent for other industries.

RHETORIC: Oil company executives and other company insiders are profiting at the expense of working class Americans.

REALITY: Tens of millions of Americans, many of them middle-class, own shares of oil company stocks through IRAs and mutual and pension funds, and they benefit from strong company earnings. Only 1.5 percent of industry shares are owned by corporate management.