Since California has no severance tax, why does Texas pay less for gas WITH a severance
tax? Are Oil companies dumb enough to buy Middle East Oil (OPEC) instead of
pumping from current California oil lease plots they still have to pay for? More
Foreign Oil? Or do they object to loosing a freebee and the tax helping ways to free us
from them? Chevron, with record profits, is using those profits to fight this and
alternative energy- they could loose those record profits! Remember the analysis of prices.
Two years ago, "one half of the price of gasoline is the cost of oil." Did the cost of
refineries and labor double in that time, or is that where the record profits came from?
This one is very different; this proposition is limited to $4 Billion, and ten years, so the
venture capital (hence laws different than operational departments) must work soon, though
the primary limit on political appointees is suspect,
since an admited repeated liar, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was elected on the basis of a lie.
From the text:
D. California is the only major oil-producing state in the country that does not impose a comparable fee on oil produced at its wells. California's oil producers are enjoying windfall profits at the expense of California consumers and taxpayers.
E. An assessment paid by California's big oil companies on their excess profits is a proven way to reclaim some of those revenues without raising prices for consumers. California is the only one of the nation's top five oil-producing states without a comparable assessment on oil producers. These assessments have proven to be impossible for the big oil companies to "pass along" to consumers in the form of higher gas prices at the pump because oil prices are set on the global market without regard to regional or local costs or assessments.