I was shocked that the Republicans still want to give these subsidies out of our taxpayer money - Taxpayer

I have mixed feelings on this issue. - Trigger Happy

I'm not sure if they really could add it to the price we pay at the pump - Just Thinking

What have we all learned about companies? - Trigger Happy

To hopefully increase domestic oil production - so that we can stop

Oil companies are EXPORTING domestic oil. - We can't win

They don't "export" it. They place some of it - to trade in open market

We should quit subsidizing it then, right? - C'mon Republicans--get with it. nm

Address the issue of dependence on foreign - oil. Come on, Democrat.

Yes, lets quit giving subsidies to Big Oil - and send it directly to China

How about let's give them the subsidies to - encourage domestic

Speculation - nm

We export more than 2 million barrels of oil - every single day.

Then why not try to stop that instead of - discourage domestic

What we need is more fracking! - Cheap N. Gas

HE!! NOOOOOOOO!!!!!! - Backwards Typist

And I thought I'd Never Agree With Backwards - Connecting The Dots

What did I say to make you think - sm

The experts are saying that's not the problem. The problem is Speculation - sm

You say you don't blame Democrats for - opposing it based on

Democrats try, Obama tries, but the Republicans have the votes - The way it works in America

Democrats control the senate...so you are - wrong about Republicans

Go do some research on 60-vote majority - Really

Didn't some Democrats cross over and - vote against it? I am

Get your reading glasses and re-read - I don't blame

Please re-read what you said, and - what I said.

I do fault MOST of the Republicans - Copy and Paste

Even if they were voting as their constituents - wanted them to?

What constituents wanted? - mbmt

Estimated by who? I am an American and - I am not against it.

I own oil stock, but I'm definitely against those subsidies - because it is bad for our country

Here's what I don't get... - Zville MT

I agree. Let's let capitalism work - Stop the Subsidies!

I posted this below but just so it doesn't get lost, here it is again - Backwards Typist

In direct answer to your post.

According to Rep. Landrieu (and she makes some sense):

1.  Of the top 20 Fortune 500 non-financial companies (ranked by market capitalization), the three U.S.-based oil and gas companies represented here today are the top taxpayers on the list. In fact, ConocoPhillips tops the entire list, with a 46 percent effective tax rate. By comparison, the top 20 companies together pay an average effective rate of 27 percent. The industry pays its taxes and then some. I think there is some real misunderstanding that these large oil and gas companies pay either little or no taxes. Maybe people have been told, and believe, that they have so many tax subsidies they do not pay taxes. I want to put that issue to rest. First of all, three companies, ConocoPhillips, Chevron and ExxonMobil these three companies have paid approximately 49 percent, 43 percent and 42 percent. This is their tax rate. I think that is pretty high.

2.     According to the Joint Economic Committee report on this bill, published last week, repealing these tax incentives ``would have little or no impact on consumer energy prices in the immediate future. The impact in the long term will also be negligible.''  Why would we want to harm five large oil and gas companies that work internationally, that employ 9.2 million people in the United States directly.

3.  Walmart is a big company. They make a lot of money and they are in all of our States. Their tax rate is 33 percent. Berkshire Hathaway their tax rate is 31 percent.  Intel  pays 27 percent. Phillip Morris27 percent; IBM, 27 percent; Verizon and Coca Cola, 21 percent; all the way down to GE paid 9 percent last year.   GE paid zero taxes to the Federal Government last year when these five big companies are paying $86 million a day.

Should some of these subsidies be looked at? Absolutely. When should they be looked at? In the Finance Committee, when we look at all the subsidies in the Tax Code for these other industries--both oil and gas and non-oil and gas, resource based and not, both retail, telecommunications and software companies, such as Intel, Microsoft, et cetera. I will be the first to stand and say that many of these subsidies--or some of them--need to be eliminated, particularly when the taxpayers are looking to close the deficit and reduce our debt.

4.  This approach undermines domestic production. According to the EIA study, published in 2008, the oil and gas industry, the big ones, received about 13 percent of the U.S. subsidies but they provide over 60 percent of the energy.  Unfortunately, while the United States was at an all-time high of oil production, the EIA, which is the Energy Information Administration, now estimates U.S. Gulf of Mexico production will decline to 1.14 million barrels a day by the year 2012. The last time the Gulf of Mexico produced less than 1.2 million barrels of oil was in 1997--more than 10 years ago.

According to a recent analysis by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, oil production from the Barnett Shale formation in Texas--literally in the backyards of the headquarters of some of the companies we heard from last week in the committee--oil production from that Barnett Shale formation in Texas has tripled since 2005. In North Dakota, oil production from shale has gone from next to zero in 2005 to 240,000 barrels a day and is expected to continue to grow. In 2010, production in the Woodford Shale in Oklahoma increased 40 percent between 2009 and 2010.

   In one area after another, there was significant increase in production. In fact, total oil production has increased over 10 percent since hitting its low point in 2008, and the Energy Information Administration predicts that because of the increased production in oil shale and other sources in the Gulf of Mexico, it is going to continue to grow. U.S. prices are also less tied to global markets and competition now than they were in 2005 because of the increased U.S. production and increased Canadian tar sands production that is pouring into the U.S. market. This ought to be of no surprise to the five major oil companies that testified last week because each of them has also made significant investments in the Canadian tar sands project.

 From Mr. Coburn:  if, in fact, our deficit wasn't $1.6 trillion but about $600 billion, the price of the dollar would shoot way up and the price of oil would go down?