Nick Snow
OGJ Washington Editor
WASHINGTON, DC, July 6 -- The American Petroleum Institute will begin running new 15-sec and 30-sec television commercials this month explaining why new oil and gas taxes are a bad idea since the industry supports 9.2 million jobs in the US and represents 7.5% of the country’s gross domestic product.
“While the focus of our industry is on helping BP stop the [Gulf of Mexico] spill and clean up the crude oil, we cannot ignore the fact that imposing significant new taxes on the oil and gas industry will have severe economic consequences and job impacts,” API Pres. Jack N. Gerard said July 3 as he announced the campaign.
The ads will run in 10 target states, namely Colorado, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia, starting July 6, API said. The commercial messages will feature working Americans’ responses to proposed new oil and gas taxes that the Obama administration proposed in its fiscal 2011 budget request, API said. Some members of Congress consider such taxes a good way to support alternative and renewable energy technology research and development.
API said opposition to higher taxes remains high among voters and has been cited as a factor in several primary elections and in recent opinion surveys.
“Americans have historically been suspicious of taxes on the industry that produces most of the industry they consume,” Gerard observed. “They deserve to be informed about new proposals that would increase those taxes by many billions of dollars a year. The ads are part of the national debate on energy and tax policy. We hope they will help ensure decisions affecting our economic and energy security are not made in a vacuum or are base on incomplete information.”
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