Senator Eyes Canada Oil Tax After Alaska Drilling Clash
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-10/senator-eyes-oil-tax-to-punish-canada-over-alaska-drilling-clashAs Alaska’s congressional delegation worked feverishly last year to achieve the decades-long dream of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, they came across a formidable opponent: Canada.
The Canadian government was concerned about the pristine wilderness on the country’s Porcupine caribou herd, named for the river that spans its range into Alaska. So its embassy in Washington lobbied U.S. lawmakers to vote against the Republican bid to add a refuge-drilling measure to the tax-cut package.
They lost the gamble. The tax cuts passed and drilling is set to resume after a 40-year hiatus....
...Alaska Republican Senator Dan Sullivan said he will introduce legislation to end a loophole through which imported oil from Alberta’s oil sands deposits doesn’t come with a 9-cent-per-barrel tax to fund clean up of oil spills. Such a change would have generated about $47 million for the U.S. in 2016, according to the Congressional Research Service....
...Sullivan said the language ending the exemption for tar sands and other forms of “synthetic petroleum†will be included in a broader bill reinstating a per-barrel fee on domestic and imported oil to fund spill cleanups. The U.S. tax, which generates hundreds of millions of dollars a year for what’s known as the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, expired at the beginning of this year....
