So I could go to Washington and announce my retirement.
The top Democrat on the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee will introduce a bill Thursday that imposes new fees on energy companies for failing to produce oil and gas on federal lands they lease.
h/t Adrian
Related.
Coming soon, announcements of increased American investment in the oilsands.
Kate Galt.
drill baby drill?
Fees that will be kicked down to the consumer.
Pay to use our land, pay if you don’t use it well enough – regardless it will be us that “get’s drilled” in the end…
The public floggings will continue until morale improves.
Can we all just agree that Ed Markey is a blithering idiot? Of course oil companies are not producing on all the land for which they have oil leases. To start with, much of it is unexplored. Much of it the oil may be in deposits too small or too expensive to extract at this time.
What this moronic Massachusetts fathead is going to do is simply have oil companies give up marginal leases and GO ELSEWHERE. It will result in LESS US domestic production of oil, not more. Markey’s real motive however has nothing to do with encouraging more domestic oil and gas production. His entire Congressional career has been driven by hatred of energy producing companies, particularly the oil and gas business and nuclear utilities. It is not too unreasonable a stretch to say that his motives include those of malice and spite.
I swear on my grandmother’s grave that there is no one in the entire Congress stupider than this dolt. He has obviously never heard of the concept called the Theory of Unintended Consequences.
@cgh
“He has obviously never heard of the concept called the Theory of Unintended Consequences.”
What do you mean, “unintended”?
Is it Bill 22?
Could the decisions of the current US andministration be described by this?
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness.It most commonly manifests as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized thinking,
Rep Malarkey (of Waxman-Malarkey Bill fame?) must have read up on “Father Ho’s” methods that were used to steal
almost all European investment in North Vietnam after he took over. All French laws dealing with workers’ health
and safety grievances were kept in effect and much more strictly enforced. As the businesses had to be shut down
pending resolution, but the workers still had to be paid pending decisions, and decisions came back at a slower
and slower turnaround, all expat businessmen/owners whose marxist credentials weren’t up to snuff soon got
the hint and left ASAP with the shirts on their backs and not much else.
This is a bill being introduced in the Republican controlled HR by a radical Democrat. I would assume that it has a snowball’s chance in hell of passing so why even think about it
albertaclipper
Yeah Malarkey is just another Democrat who doesn’t realize elections have consequences…..
Behind this is the eco-nazi quest to stop all oil and gas exploration.
They have used the argument in the past that the Oilcos shouldn’t be given new leases on new land when they have millions of acres already under lease thay are not drilling on. Of course this makes no sense to those who understand that oil doesn’t exist underground on equal quantities and or is as easily accessed everywhere.
But the enviros are banking that the average voter doesn’t understand that. This tax proposal is just another way of trying to make this false propaganda current. to agrue that oilcos don’t need to access ANwar et al until they have finished fully exploiting the leases they already have. Dishonest, dangerous nonsense. dispicable, too.
I wish these folks well in their air heated huts.
I think the oil companies would have already paid a fee or a bonus to lease the federal land.
Malarkey is either one of the stupidest persons ever elected, or one of the most cynical agenda-driven ideologues. He can’t really think that there is oil under every inch of that leased land. For someone so fixated with the oil companies, he doesn’t seem to understand the oil industry at all.
Interesting conundrum if you think about it.
Getting permits to drill are getting harder and harder to obtain from the relevant ministries. And if you don’t drill, you get penalized for not producing. So it is in the best interest of the government to delay issuing permits thus making you pay even more in non-production penalties.
There’s a phrase for this: “F**k you very much”.
I expect the US government charges the drillers for the leases, and now want to charge them for not using them? This lot of democrats really do hate America.
Shades of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.
It should be obvious to anyone that the more regulated an industry, the less innovative and more inefficient it becomes. Its cost of production rises and its profits fall. In the end, successive loses brought about by needless regulation force these companies out of business or worse yet, they are forced to become wards of the state.
Government overregulation is the country’s worst enemy.
Another reason to be grateful for last November’s election results; if the Democrats still held the House of Representatives, his idea might have actually passed.
This village idiot probably gets all his petroleum exploration knowledge from reruns of The Beverly Hillbillies. He doesn’t realize that there is a whole lot of money put out by the drillers for access to explore before the dirt is even disturbed. If they don’t get squat the government still gets all their fees.
These idiots just make Sarah Palin look smarter every day.
Here is an interesting commentary on the Bakken oil formation and its possiblities.
Bonus is half down the article where the comments are made concerning increasing fees/taxes on oil production and what it does to it.
Which is something Democrats/Liberals never understand about taxes and business.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7499?nocomments
A shocking fact is the point that 85% of all USA oil wells produce less than 15 bbls/day.
Only error they made in the article is the fact they apparently do not know about the new controlled (spaced) method of fracturing that can vastly increase the efficiency of recovery rates in new and old fields.
I guess Wiki has not been updated.
Someone should look a little closer to home. Alberta doesn’t allow oil companies to sit on leases either. Use it or lose it.
I absolutely agree that over-regulation is the enemy of the citizen. Do you know what regulation is code for? It’s code for increasing cost.
It’s a little off topic but in order to make my point, I work in the food industry and regulators are constantly trying to keep their own jobs by creating new and more cumbersome regulations. Who would be opposed to having safer food (even though our food is tremendously safe already)? What they really mean – but they don’t tell you consumers – is that they are going to make your food more and more expensive. As everyone in the food chain has to follow more strict and rediculous regulations, there will be more expense that will all get passed to ye who buys the food. I assume the same happens with every other consumer good that has stupid regulators regulating the H3LL out of anything and everything.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of wells that were drilled in western Canada simply to hold onto leased land. There are conditions on these leases, one of them being they must be exploited, or the lease will expire. Oil companies will drill exploratory wells, just to keep inventory. Many remain capped for years, and a few are actually forgotten.
At least, drilling wells creates a few jobs. Just shelling out penalties to the government is harder to stomach.
Doesn’t a lease lead to the unintended consequence of preventing others from drilling? Does the lease not allow a company to use government to regulate their competition and the inevitable manipulation of the market.
If so, this is not free market enterprise. This is a process that promotes monopolies.
Bad for the economy and bad for the consumer.
conned: moronic drivel from first to last from you. Leases are bid on in the US. There’s your competition. Do you even understand “free market competition” and how and where it takes place?
Coach: “…and a few are actually forgotten…”
Such a claim requires some evidence. Proof please.
O.K. wait a sec ….lets see if I get this ….the feds are going to fine oil companies for not drilling on federal land they hold leases on but will deny them the permits they need to drill. * GRIN * ….makes perfect sense to me