Bloodless Coup

Big Oil Flush With Untold Billions as Louisiana Suffers Economic Collapse

Oh yeah, this is fair. But I guess when it's what happens when you put supposed oil men (not real oil men, but big business cronies who equate being successful businessmen with cronyism) in charge of the country.

New projections, buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, anticipate that the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government. Based on the administration figures, the government will give up more than $7 billion in payments between now and 2011. The companies are expected to get the largess, known as royalty relief, even though the administration assumes that oil prices will remain above $50 a barrel throughout that period.

Post-Katrina Louisiana (which, I'm not sure, but I want to say is our country's #1 crude oil producer - if it's not #1 it's near the top) is an economic basket case of the first order. And it's going to be that way for years to come. And for years Sen. Mary Landrieu has been trying to get more aid to the state from petroleum taxes (which almost all go to the feds, not the state) to help combat coastal erosion and wetland destruction, which the big oil companies have had more than a little to do with. Yet the big oil companies are going to make a freakin' fortune off "royalty relief" - while the people who let the companies make that cash are forced to slice education and health care budgets to shreds.