The RPSEA Rip-Off: How the Natural Gas Industry Extracted a Billion-Dollar Boondoggle from Congress

Publication Date: January 2007

Publisher: Public Citizen, inc.

Author(s): Taylor Lincoln; John O'Donnell

Research Area: Energy; Politics

Keywords: lobbying; appropriations; earmark; energy

Type: Report

Coverage: United States

Abstract:

"The RPSEA Rip-Off: How the Natural Gas Industry Extracted a Billion-Dollar Boondoggle from Congress," describes how companies with profits that totaled more than $100 billion in 2005 set up a taxpayer-funded subsidy establishing a 10-year, $1.5 billion research program to find ways to extract oil and gas from "ultra-deepwater" depths and hard-to-access onshore areas. American taxpayers will begin doling out about $400 million - and possibly more than a billion dollars -over 10 years to a research consortium that includes wealthy oil and gas companies due to a provision slipped quietly into the enormous 2005 energy bill.