{"id":7273,"date":"2026-04-07T01:02:56","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T01:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/07\/opinion-congress-must-prevent-the-oil-industry-from-profiteering-off-the-iran-war-anchorage-daily-news\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T01:02:56","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T01:02:56","slug":"opinion-congress-must-prevent-the-oil-industry-from-profiteering-off-the-iran-war-anchorage-daily-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/07\/opinion-congress-must-prevent-the-oil-industry-from-profiteering-off-the-iran-war-anchorage-daily-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Congress must prevent the oil industry from profiteering off the Iran war – Anchorage Daily News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> 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 \u201cprofits.\u201d
By some estimates, U.S. oil companies stand to reap<\/a> $60 billion in excess profits this year from the Iran war price increase. They don\u2019t deserve one penny of this.
The U.S. imposed a similar windfall profits tax on oil in 1980<\/a> 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\u2019s 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 \u201cThe United States is the largest oil producer in the world, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money,\u201d the \u201cwe\u201d he refers to is not \u201cwe the people,\u201d 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<\/a>, which is a great start. It will be interesting to see which Republicans, if any, support the bill. What is the Alaska\u2019s congressional delegation\u2019s 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\u2019s \u201cbig bad bill,\u201d 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 <\/i>Oasis Earth Initiative<\/i><\/a> from Anchorage.<\/i>
The Anchorage Daily News welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email <\/i>commentary(at)adn.com<\/i><\/a>. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to <\/i>letters@adn.com<\/i><\/a> or <\/i>click here to submit via any web browser<\/i><\/a>. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries <\/i>here<\/i><\/a>.<\/i>
Rick Steiner is a biologist in Anchorage, and retired professor with the University of Alaska.
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Anchorage Daily News
300 W. 31st Ave.
Anchorage, Alaska, 99503<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u201cprofits.\u201dBy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7274,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7273","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}