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Shouldn't California ask oil and gas drillers to give a little back, at long last?
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Oil drilling rig off the California Coast, just past sunset, October, 2006. ---arbyreed
What to do about the $24 billion California State budget crisis which could force the State to close its doors, unable to make payroll, by the end of July?
Tax existing oil and gas drilling, for one, say advocates for California schools, health care, parks, children, elderly, and mentally ill, and, advocates for the environment.
California gives oil and gas drilling corporations the sweetest deal on the planet. It's the only state in the union that doesn't tax oil and gas drilling revenues.
And, if California were a nation, it would be the only nation in the world that doesn't tax oil and gas revenues.
in November 2008, California Governor Schwarzenegger actually proposed an "oil severance tax" described in the California Capitol Report:
"Oil severance tax: Effective Jan. 1, 2009 Schwarzenegger would tax oil extracted from the ground or water in California at a rate of 9.9 percent of the gross value.
What it would bring in: $528 million in 2008-09 and $1.195 billion in 2009-10"
Nearly $2 billion dollars in oil and gas taxes would indeed keep a lot of books and teachers in a lot of K-12 classrooms, far more than the controversial sale of new oil and gas drilling leases off the coast of Santa Barbara, which would raise only a relatively trivial $100 million this year.
Assuming a similar rate in the past, California could solve the entire $24 billion state budget crisis by imposing just twelve years of back taxes on all the oil and gas resources that Californians have so generously contributed to their capital accumulation efforts throughout the State's history.
However, California's State legislature left Schwarzenegger's extraction tax out of last February's budget. And, after the failure of five revenue raising budget propositions, including one to increase state lottery revenues, Schwarzenegger announced that, "There will be no revenue increases. This means cuts, cuts, cuts, and living within our means."
No new taxes, not even on oil and gas drilling corporations now paying none.
Most environmental and social justice activists oppose the new oil and gas drilling leases and argue for taxing the oil and gas wells already in operation.
Far better to finally tax oil and gas drillers for $2 billion this year, and, continue to do so for another $2 billion/yr. as long as existing wells remain open, than to expand the oil and gas infrastructure which is already cause for so much environmentally destructive, unsustainable, boom'n bust development, not to mention war, corruption, and military occupation.
The only danger of this argument is that California could, like the State of Alaska, or like neo-colonies of the Global South, become so dependent on oil revenues that "Drill, Baby Drill!" drowns out all the California Coast's defenders, incuding even the Surfrider Foundation.
Oil and gas are taxable, but not renewable, and not sustainable. No one could attest to that better than Nigerians, Iraqis, Afghanis, Pakistanis, and even Palestinians, who have $4 billion worth of natural gas off the coast of Gaza.
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