Opinion: Congress must prevent the oil industry from profiteering off the Iran war – Anchorage Daily News

As the Iran war has increased global oil prices more than $30 per barrel, a rational congressional response would be to impose a commensurate $30 per barrel windfall profits tax on oil companies, recalibrated daily based on global oil price and applied retroactively to the start of the war, to recover these ill-gotten war “profits.”
By some estimates, U.S. oil companies stand to reap $60 billion in excess profits this year from the Iran war price increase. They don’t deserve one penny of this.
The U.S. imposed a similar windfall profits tax on oil in 1980 to recover excess oil industry profits due to the OPEC oil embargo at the time. It is time to do so again.
At 20 million barrels per day used in the U.S., a $30 per barrel windfall profits tax would raise additional federal revenue of $600 million per day. This significant windfall into the U.S. Treasury could then be returned to Americans in tax relief, used to subsidize green energy to accelerate our transition away from oil and/or used to defray the exorbitant financial cost of the war, now projected to exceed $200 billion.
Here in Alaska, it is truly shameful to watch state officials in their gleeful feeding frenzy to spend Alaska’s share of these war profits, without expressing the slightest concern for the loss of life and destruction from which these funds derive, or the cost to Alaska consumers.
And although President Trump claims that as “The United States is the largest oil producer in the world, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money,” the “we” he refers to is not “we the people,” but rather his big oil contributors. Since the war began, oil companies have taken billions of dollars in excess war revenue directly from American consumers, and they need to give it back, all of it.
To recover some of these war profits, Senate Democrats recently introduced S. 4111, the Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act, which is a great start. It will be interesting to see which Republicans, if any, support the bill. What is the Alaska’s congressional delegation’s position on this?
The clear choice now for Congress is whether to allow oil companies to get even richer off the war, on top of the billions of dollars Congress gave the industry in last year’s “big bad bill,” or to secure the broader interests of all American citizens. Voters will be watching.
Rick Steiner is a retired University of Alaska professor and conducts the Oasis Earth Initiative from Anchorage.
The Anchorage Daily News welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.
Rick Steiner is a biologist in Anchorage, and retired professor with the University of Alaska.
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