Nation's Largest Oil Spill

[tw]

Exxon Valdez was not this nation's largest oil spill - just the one that got hyped more often. The largest oil spill is in Brooklyn (Greenpoint), created by Mobil, and occured some 50 years ago when it was cheaper to ignore all that missing oil. From the NY Times of 8 Feb 2007:

Cuomo to Sue Exxon Over Pollution in Brooklyn
Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo moved today to sue ExxonMobil and four other companies over millions of gallons of oil lying under the Greenpoint neighborhood in Brooklyn and to repair environmental damage inflicted on the nearby Newtown Creek.

The decision marks a sharp turning point in the state’s handling of the half-century-old spill, which in recent years has sparked lawsuits by Greenpoint residents, local elected officials and environmental groups. A 1990 agreement between ExxonMobil and state environmental officials had required the company to recover the spilled oil, but specified no deadline, levied no penalties for the pollution and required no remediation of either the creek or the polluted soil under Greenpoint.

[xoxoxoBruce]

This means we all have to chip in to clean up NYC. It would be naive to think the costs won't be passed along as price increases of tax reductions.

[Happy Monkey]

Well, the oil industry is a cartel, not a monopoly. The price of gas is set by the cartel, not Exxon, so unless the other members want to send them the cash, they'll pay out of their profits.

[xoxoxoBruce]

It's operating expense. It'll come off their taxes not their profits, which means we have to make up the shortfall in government revenues.

[Happy Monkey]

Were they paying any in the first place?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Ah, good point.

While they were recording record profits last year, they were also writing checks to Uncle Sam to the tune of $100.7 billion -- two and a half times what they made in net profit. In fact, previous Tax Foundation research found that from 1977 to 2004, federal and state governments extracted $397 billion by taxing the profits of the largest oil companies and an additional $1.1 trillion in taxes at the pump. In today's dollars, that's $2.2 trillion.