Obama wants to tax the companies

One cent more per barrel for security”

NEW YORK – An extra tax of one cent of a dollar per barrel charged to oil companies to finance security: proposed by the president of the United States, Barack Obama. The sum collected with the new tax, estimated at 118 million dollars a year, would go into a fund destined for an oil spill risk response program . The Washington administration also suggests raising the compensation limit to one and a half billion dollars.

According to a bill, presented to Congress three weeks after the platform exploded Deepwater Horizon oil off the coast of Louisiana, the federal government proposes that the fee to support the environmental damage liability fund should be increased from eight to nine cents per barrel.

The fund is currently used to finance the cleaning and protection of the coasts threatened by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The tax would then increase to 10 cents in 2017.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the Energy and Trade Committee of the American House of Representatives, Henry Waxman, reported that the leaders of British Petroleum, the company that manages the platform that exploded on April 20, told the investigators that just the morning of the accident the Deepwater Horizon oil well had not passed a key pressure test. During a hearing before the Energy and Trade Committee of the House of Representatives it emerged that the explosion would be caused by a hydraulic failure in the safety mechanism that was supposed to seal the oil well in the event of sudden pressure.

Failed all attempts made so far, ideas are multiplied, often outlandish, to stop the oil spill. Among the many there is the one launched by the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, which suggests using the atomic bomb. According to the newspaper, in Soviet times, this method would solve similar problems with controlled nuclear explosions. Thus, while crude oil continues to spread in the Gulf of Mexico at the frightening rate of 750,000 liters a day, the Russians advise an underwater explosion that could push the rocks to close the leaks from which the oil comes out. There is, however, the newspaper admits, a 20% probability that the attempt will fail.

(12 May 2010)