Proposed oil and coal company handouts incentivize drilling, undermine climate action

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 13, 2017

Contact
Janet Redman, janet [at] priceofoil [dot] org

Proposed oil and coal company handouts incentivize drilling, undermine climate action
Yesterday, Sens. Whitehouse (D-RI), Heinrich (D-ND), Capito (R-WV) and Barrasso (R-WY) introduced the Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage Act, legislation to extend and more than double tax credits to fossil fuel companies for using climate pollution to extract more oil.

Janet Redman, U.S. Policy Director at Oil Change International, released the following response:

“Big Oil must have been popping the champagne last night. They’ve successfully sold a fifth of the Senate a bag of magic beans that they say will help curb climate change, when really they’ve just moved closer to securing what could be billions in tax handouts over the next decade.

“Ramping up corporate tax giveaways for capturing climate pollution and pumping it into wells to extract more oil – and climate pollution – may be great for the fossil fuel industry, but it’s a disaster for the climate, American taxpayers, and the families who struggle every day with the local impacts of fossil fuel extraction.

“It’s perplexing that lawmakers would introduce this tax credit a week after the boondoggle Kemper Plant in Mississippi – supposedly the country’s premier carbon capture and sequestration power plant – abandoned its CCS plans years over schedule and billions over cost.

“Even if a coal plant did manage to capture some carbon, that does nothing to protect communities from the full lifecycle of coal power – from mining, to transport, to coal ash disposal. Are these politicians so beholden to the fossil fuel industry that they’ll throw coal power plants a lifeline and Big Oil extra income at the expense of communities?”

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