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Tell Some Friends About This Page! Raw: Uncooked Truth, Beyond Belief This is a sample issue of RAW newsletter, which delivers facts, figures, quotes, and humor for people who care about the environment. Sign up for RAW today. ExxonMobil's 10 Billion Reasons to Party Annie Strickler, RAW Contributor You know it's an election year when politicians are tripping over themselves to pretend they are doing something about high gas prices. They aren't actually doing anything, but they sure want the credit. Of course Congress has had years to tackle high gas prices, our dangerous dependence on oil, and investing in new energy technologies. And the GOP has been in control of the House, Senate and White House the last four years, so they have no excuses for not addressing these issues. Oh, wait. They did do something last year: the wrong thing. A year ago this week, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that President Bush then signed. Flashback a year: "This balanced bill will lower energy prices for consumers...," said Rep. Joe Barton. (Oil Daily, July 27, 2005) "The Energy Policy Act of 2005 is going to help every American who drives to work, every family that pays a power bill and every small business hoping to expand," the president said. (Albuquerque Journal, August 9, 2005) "The Senate today has passed a bipartisan energy bill that will make a real difference to every American," said Sen. Pete V. Domenici, Chairman of the Energy & Natural Resources Committee. (Senator's Statement, July 29, 2006) Huh. According to AAA, the average price of gas on August 1 last year was $2.24. Today it's $3.00 (almost as high as the post-Katrina spike last September). The price of a barrel of oil on July 29 last year was $60.42. Today it's $74.35. On July 28 of last year ExxonMobil announced its second-quarter profits were $7.64 billion. Today they announced second-quarter profits for 2006, yet another absurd record-setter for the biggest of Big Oil: $10.36 billion. That's a 36 percent increase and the second largest quarterly profit ever recorded by a publicly traded U.S. company. ExxonMobil's revenue rose 12 percent to $99 billion, marking the first time in history that a U.S. company exceeded $1 billion a day. (Note: The Energy Policy Act of 2005 included $80 billion in tax breaks, direct spending and authorizations, the majority of it going to polluting industries like oil companies.) Looks like most Americans -- save Big Oil -- actually got shafted by the highly-touted energy bill. Now Congress is back with their "drill it all mentality," and the drilling proposal-du-jour is offshore drilling. But in a rerun of last year's Energy Bill, instead of smart energy solutions like energy efficiency and making cars go farther on a gallon of gas (an amendment by Senators Obama and Lugar that would raise fuel economy standards was not allowed), Congress is lining up more giveaways to Big Oil. So let me get this straight: Congress is logging an Oscar-worthy performance of acting like they have a clue about how to solve America's energy problems, Americans are paying record prices at the pump and getting a raw deal on energy policies, and by my calculations ExxonMobil is making about $26,000 every minute. Who's got the stomach for another energy bill? SUBSCRIBE TO RAW Up to Top