[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 4]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 5005]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 TAR SANDS TAX LOOPHOLE ELIMINATION ACT

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                          HON. EARL BLUMENAUER

                               of oregon

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, March 28, 2017

  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, today, I am reintroducing the Tar Sands 
Tax Loophole Elimination Act. This bill will ensure that oil companies 
can no longer sidestep paying their fair share into the dedicated trust 
fund created so that, in the event of an oil spill, there are resources 
immediately available for cleanup.
  The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, authorized in 1990, ensures we 
have funding available to pay for the immediate costs of cleaning up 
oil spills. It is funded by an eight cents per barrel excise tax on 
crude oil and petroleum products. In 2011, however, the Internal 
Revenue Service (IRS) issued a misguided decision stating that oil 
derived from tar sands is not considered crude oil and is therefore 
currently exempt from the tax that pays into the Fund.
  Oil that comes from tar sands is a thick, sticky form of crude oil 
that can be more difficult and costly to clean up than other types of 
crude. In 2010, for example, a pipeline owned and operated by a 
Canadian company, Enbridge, spilled more than 850,000 gallons of tar 
sands oil into a waterway that flows into the Kalamazoo River in 
Michigan. That has been one of the largest and costliest pipeline 
spills in American history, with the price tag now at $1.2 billion 
dollars.
  While I do not support the development of tar sands--doing so is 
environmentally destructive and carbon-intensive, we should not keep in 
place a loophole that lets big oil companies off the hook for cleaning 
up their tar sands spills. The Tar Sands Tax Loophole Elimination Act 
would add oil derived from tar sands and oil shale to the definition of 
crude oil, closing the current loophole and ensuring that oil companies 
pay into the fund. Oil companies already get billions of dollars in 
taxpayer-based subsidies, and this bill will ensure they will not be 
given an additional free ride on tar sands and any future oil shale 
development.

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