Oil Industry

WAUKESHA, Wis. -- Just before President Obama gave his scathing critique of the Republican Party on Tuesday, Mitt Romney sought to blunt the impact by accusing him of failing to take responsibility for the rise in gasoline prices. Campaigning at a fast-food restaurant in this Milwaukee suburb on the day of Wisconsin's Republican presidential primary, Romney criticized a television ad that Obama's reelection campaign started airing this week in six White House battleground states.

Upset about high gasoline prices? So are the folks in Congress -- they just have a different way of showing it. As Time staff writers Lisa Mascaro and Christi Parsons reported Thursday: “The Senate blocked an effort to end billions of dollars in tax breaks for the oil industry, brushing aside President Obama's argument that the five big oil companies were doing 'just fine' while consumers were struggling with painfully high gasoline prices.”...

WASHINGTON — The Senate blocked an effort to end billions of dollars in tax breaks for the oil industry, brushing aside President Obama's argument that the five big oil companies were doing "just fine" while consumers were struggling with painfully high gasoline prices. The measure to kill the industry tax preferences failed on a 51-47 procedural vote Thursday. It needed 60 votes to overcome a Republican-led filibuster that was supported by some Democrats from oil-rich states.

As rising gas prices are putting pressure on politicians to act, President Obama called on Congress to vote quickly to eliminate subsidies for the oil industry, returning to a favorite target the president. "I want them to vote on this in the next few weeks, so we can put every single member on record: You can either stand up for the oil companies, or you can stand up for the American people," the president told a crowd gathered at Nashua Community College. The president's push to eliminate the subsidies is nothing new. Obama campaigned on the issue four years ago and has proposed cutting the subsidies repeatedly in his budgets and tax proposals.

Late last year, Gov. Jerry Brown pushed for a top state regulator to ease key requirements for companies seeking to tap California's oil. The official balked. Relaxing rules on underground injection, a risky method of oil extraction common in the state, would violate environmental laws, wrote Derek Chernow, then head of the Department of Conservation, in a memo obtained by The Times. The process, in which a rush of steam, water and chemicals flushes oil from old wells, had been linked to spills, eruptions and a Kern County worker's death.

Occidental Petroleum Corp. kicked off what was expected to be a parade of healthy earnings reports for the oil industry, announcing a fourth-quarter profit gain of 35% on the strength of high oil prices and record U.S. crude production. Occidental's fourth-quarter net income of $1.6 billion, or $2.01 a share, compared with $1.2 billion, or $1.49 a share, in the same quarter of 2010. Occidental's revenue jumped 19% for the quarter to $6 billion. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had been expecting earnings of $1.95 a share and sales of $5.8 billion.

Occidental Petroleum Corp. kicked off the oil industry's fourth-quarter earnings results Wednesday. It  announced a net profit increase of 35% to $1.63 billion compared to the same quarter a year ago as the company rode the crest of a high oil-price wave and record U.S. crude production levels. Westwood-based Occidental is the nation's fourth largest oil exploration and production company. It has a reputation among analysts as being one of the industry's best managed firms. In 2011, Occidental and the rest of the oil industry enjoyed the highest average oil prices ever, but analysts said the company is built to maximize earnings even when oil prices are low. "In our view," said Phil Weiss, an oil industry analyst with Argus Research, "Occidental's low cost structure and use of enhanced oil-recovery techniques to increase production and build reserves will enable it to maintain strong cash flow and profitability in almost any price environment.

The Obama administration has denied a permit for the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada, asserting that it did not "have sufficient time to obtain the information necessary to assess whether the project, in its current state, is in the national interest," the State Department announced. The decision is sure to prolong a bitter political fight that has raged for months over the pipeline's fate. For Republicans, the oil industry and the Chamber of Commerce, Keystone has become a one-word campaign slogan: synonymous with many of the themes of government regulatory overreach they have tried over the course of the year to pin on President Obama.

Anywhere else, linking an aromatic cup of coffee and a gooey glob of oil would quickly kill a restaurant. Not so in Taft, Calif., the Taft Crude Coffee House is a popular stop for hot coffee or iced mocha. And in an era when oil spills tend to be environmental disasters, people here are happy to provide directions to the Lakeview Gusher, even though it spewed more than 9 million barrels of oil, nearly twice the amount spilled in 2010 from the Deepwater Horizon, the ill-fated British Petroleum rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

And so it ends. The United States is leaving Iraq. I'm solidly in the camp that sees this as a strategic blunder. Iraqi democracy is fragile and Iran's desire to undermine it is strong. Also, announcing our withdrawal is a weird way to respond to a foiled Iranian plot to commit an act of war in the U.S. capital. Obviously, I hope I'm wrong and President Obama's not frittering away our enormous sacrifices in Iraq out of domestic political concerns and diplomatic ineptitude. Still, there's an upside.