Big European Oil Companies Want UN to Slap Carbon Tax on U.S.
The Europeans are sometimes, well, stupid. How else can you explain six large oil companies–BG Group, BP, Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Statoil and Total–buying into the tax scheme called carbon credits? The six sent a letter (copy below) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) begging the UN to introduce carbon pricing systems and “create clear, stable, ambitious policy frameworks that could eventually connect national systems” that would “reduce uncertainty and encourage the most cost effective ways of reducing carbon emissions widely.” This is madness. Create laws that supersede each country’s sovereignty and impose a worldwide tax on carbon–the stuff you breathe out with every breath–as some sort of solution for the imaginary problem of man-made global warming? If the UN does such a thing, it will spell the end of the companies sending the letter! What do you call a company trying to commit economic suicide? Do the investors of these six companies know the heads of those companies are trying to destroy the company and their investments along with it? No wonder Europe is in decline…
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Wow–who woulda thunk? Drillers in West Virginia paid double the amount of revenue in severance taxes in 2014 than they did in 2013–a total of $188 million. Those numbers are approaching the total haul for the tax/impact fee in Pennsylvania (a little over $200 million each year). But there’s a big difference between the revenue raised in WV and PA. In PA, 60% of the revenue raised stays local with the towns and counties where drilling occurs, and 40% goes to the state and other geographies. We call the 40% “walking around money” (i.e. extortion) that politicians had to agree to in order to get any kind of deal done that remotely approaches common sense. In WV however, an eye-popping 90% of the severance revenue raised goes to the state–to disappear through politicians’ fingers–while a meager 7.5% stays in the counties that see drilling…
Very good news for the Ohio Utica Shale industry: RINO Gov. John Kasich’s plan to raise the severance tax is dead–at least for this year. Yesterday Ohio legislators stripped out a proposed tax hike from the state’s budget bill. We’re still not out of the woods yet as far as a tax increase down the road. Legislators decided to set up a “study committee” made up of both House and Senate members to consider a severance tax increase in the future. This is the third year in a row Kasich has tried and failed to raise the severance tax. Perhaps sensing yet another defeat on the tax issue, last month Kasich made a not-so-subtle threat that if the drilling industry doesn’t accept his 6.5% severance tax now, a ballot initiative may just pop up out of thin air to enact a higher severance tax–and that imitative would probably be for 10% or more (see 
Katie McGinty is one of the Ed Rendell retreads employed by current PA Gov. Tom Wolf. She’s one of two former DEP Secretaries (under Rendell) working for Wolf. In fact, she is Tom Wolf’s chief of staff–arguably the second-most powerful person in Harrisburg after the governor himself. We’ve previously chronicled her background and how she might influence Wolf on Marcellus drilling matters (see 
Pennsylvania’s Acting Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary, John Quigley, continues to come under fire from PA Republican legislators over his (so far) less-than-transparent operation of the department–especially over firing the former Oil & Gas Technical Advisory Board members and replacing them with his own people, including so-called “non-voting” members (see