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exxon valdez
Trump and Congress Just Gifted Big Oil a Multimillion Dollar Stocking Stuffer
By allowing an industry tax toward oil spill prevention and response to expire, GOP leaders are exposing the nation to the unnecessary risk of continued oil pollution, including major disasters like Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon.
Dec 19, 2025
As Congress recesses this week without reauthorizing the Affordable Care Act subsidies needed by millions of Americans, it also quietly gave the oil industry a multimillion dollar tax break by allowing the 9 cent-per-barrel oil tax (on domestic and imported oil) into the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund to expire as well on December 31. The OSLTF, administered by the Coast Guard’s National Pollution Funds Center, is the nation’s central financial instrument for oil spill prevention and response, earning about $500 million per year from the nominal excise oil tax—about 0.1% of annual US oil industry revenue.
In our current political climate prioritizing industry over public interest, many feared that Congress and the Trump administration might simply allow the oil spill tax to expire, as a “Return on Investment” for industry contributions made to their political campaigns. Congress did just that. As they increase costs for millions of Americans, the Republican congress and administration are decreasing costs for some of the richest companies in the world.
For decades, Congress and the administration have remained stubbornly resistant to using the OSLTF to fund necessary oil spill prevention measures across the nation, and as tax revenue and spill damage recoveries continued to be collected, the fund balance has now grown to over $10 billion. Since the fund’s use for a single oil spill is limited to $1.5 billion, we have long proposed that a substantial portion of the remaining balance be used to better prevent oil pollution across the nation. Instead of just leaving all of this money in the bank, it should be put to work, while saving enough (perhaps $5 billion) for conventional oil spill response activities.
A transcendent lesson learned in all major oil spills around the world is that once oil is spilled, there is precious little that can be done to limit environmental damage. Historically, an average of 2-6% of total spill volume is actually recovered in major marine oil spills (Deepwater Horizon was about 4%, Exxon Valdez about 8%). These multibillion dollar spill responses may look good for oil company and government public relations, but they are virtually irrelevant in limiting environmental harm. Prevention is key to environmental protection.
As a fundamental cause of the 1989 Exxon Valdez and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disasters was inadequate government oversight, expanding drilling while cutting oversight is as reckless as it gets.
Spill prevention measures across the nation in need of more funding include enhanced Vessel Traffic Systems, escort-rescue tugs to prevent groundings and collisions of tankers and cargo ships in dangerous passages (e.g. the March 2024 cargo ship Dali collision with the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore Harbor), enhanced inspection of oil and liquefied natural gas tankers, and so on. However, the federal government has resisted using the fund for such preventive measures.
With the OSLTF tax expiration approaching this summer, we proposed that the fund’s 9 cent-per-barrel tax on domestic and imported crude oil (less than 0.2% of today’s crude oil price, or less than one cent-per-gallon of gasoline) be fully reauthorized, and that the fund’s use for many oil spill prevention measures be significantly expanded. Congress and the administration were unresponsive, raising suspicions that they intended to allow the oil tax to expire, which they just did.
One proposed use for the fund is to safely cap and decommission the millions of derelict, abandoned oil and gas wells across the nation, both onshore and offshore. Regarding these orphaned and abandoned oil wells, a 2021 scientific paper found that, of the 4,700,000 historic and active oil and gas wells across the US, only 1 in 3 (1,500,000) are considered safely plugged. Leakage from improperly abandoned oil and gas wells causes groundwater and air pollution, ecological damage, risk of explosions, and damage to human health.
Costs for well decommissioning and abandonment have been estimated to range from $10,000-$50,000 to plug old, shallow wells; $300,000 for newer, deeper wells; and up to $1 million for more complex wells. In a 2015 study, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated the cost to securely decommission the thousands of deepwater oil and gas wells in the US Gulf of Mexico (two-thirds of the 5,000 wells in the Gulf of Mexico are in deep water) at $38.2 billion. The GAO study reported that, of the $38.2 billion in decommissioning liabilities, $2.3 billion were not covered by existing financial assurances; and of the remaining $35.9 billion in decommissioning liabilities, the federal government held $2.9 billion in bonds and other assurances, while waiving the remaining $33 billion for companies that passed a “financial strength test.” The GAO expressed concern about such extensive waivers of financial assurances, as this exposes the federal government to substantial future costs.
Clearly, abandoned oil and gas wells present enormous oil pollution risk, public safety hazard, and substantial government financial liability that we as a nation have ignored for too long. We have to do better, and using the OSLTF for this purpose would clearly be in the national interest.
Further, while the Trump administration recently proposed opening virtually the entire US Outer Continental Shelf (more than 1 billion acres of the nation's offshore waters) to oil and gas drilling, it slashed the budget for the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) by roughly 35%, from $220 million to just $143 million. As a fundamental cause of the 1989 Exxon Valdez and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disasters was inadequate government oversight, expanding drilling while cutting oversight is as reckless as it gets. Thus, an important use for the federal oil spill fund should be to expand BSEE's budget, as it is largely focused on preventing catastrophic oil spills from the nation's several thousand offshore oil rigs. There are countless other cost-effective pollution prevention measures as well that need OSLTF funding.
But with Congress and the Trump administration ignoring these real funding needs, and allowing the oil tax to expire (as a gift to their oil industry contributors), the nation remains exposed to unnecessary risk of continued oil pollution, including small chronic releases, as well as major disasters like the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon. So much for “government efficiency.” Hopefully Congress will come to its senses in 2026, and fix what it just broke.
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'All of Our Tricks Worked': Spoof ExxonMobil Ad Nails Just How Easy It's Been for Big Oil
"Do you have any idea how easy it is to get you off our backs with a little bullsh*t about your responsibilities to the planet?"
Jul 09, 2024
A new parody ExxonMobil advertisement released Tuesday by a group founded by Adam McKay—the Academy Award-winning writer and director of the blockbuster doomsday climate comedy Don't Look Up—mocks humanity for letting Big Oil get away with causing one of the biggest existential threats of all time.
"There's a world we all want to live in again. A world where the air is pure and crisp and clean and fills your lungs with joy. A world where you can drink water from any river or creek and your house will still be there tomorrow if it rains," the narrator of Yellow Dot Studio's latest parody video says in the two-minute clip. "Here at Exxon, we believe in that world, and we're working hard to make sure that our customers believe that we believe in that world."
"We understand the road has been bumpy, and we haven't always done the best we could," he says over footage of the Exxon Valdez disaster, in which more than 10 million gallons of crude oil were spilled in Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989.
Wow, this new Exxon ad is surprisingly candid. pic.twitter.com/FYEf2GNdGE
— Yellow Dot Studios (@weareyellowdot) July 9, 2024
The voice-over continues:
Sure, our own scientists accurately predicted climate change 60 years ago. But we didn't want you to know about it. That's why we spent billions on ads and media manipulation covering it up, then we rigged the government so leaders in both parties would do our bidding, and yes, we did everything in our power to block clean energy tech so we could keep force-feeding you oil via expanding global infrastructure, monstrous vehicles, and disposable plastics and chemicals that don't go away. Ever.
The video follows the recent conclusion of a bicameral Senate investigation into Big Oil's decades of spreading climate disinformation and obstructing a green transition—after which lawmakers called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate fossil fuel giants. There is also a nascent movement urging state and local prosecutors to go after the oil and gas industry for climate-related deaths.
"And yes, every now and then you squawk about how evil we are, but then we drop gas prices a nickel and you shut right back up," the narrator says. "Do you have any idea how easy it is to get you off our backs with a little bullshit about your responsibilities to the planet? About your carbon footprint? Pretending plastic recycling actually makes a difference?"
"You're letting us get away with it, you dumb bitches" he adds mockingly. "All of our tricks worked. The world is a burning, out-of-control charnel house. The last generation to die of old age has already been born, and you still let oil executives freely show their face in public."
"We're just one company but you're 7 billion people," the video concludes. "Get off your asses and do something, you fucking peasants!"
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'Devastated Lives': Shell Sued Again over Catastrophic Spills in Nigeria
Two new lawsuits say Shell is liable for oil spills that have destroyed livelihoods, contaminated water supplies, and rendered some wetlands 'lifeless' in the fragile ecosystem
Mar 02, 2016
Royal Dutch Shell must pay for the lives and livelihoods destroyed by the decades-long deluge of oil spilled from its pipelines in the Niger Delta, two lawsuits filed in London on Tuesday charged.
"Shell has an appalling record of obfuscation and misinformation with regard to its dealings in the Niger Delta," said Peter Frankental, director of Amnesty International's UK Economic Affairs Programme.
Shell's pipelines traverse the fragile Niger Delta ecosystem--and humanitarian groups last year drew attention to the company's decades-long efforts to cover up, rather than fix, its myriad pipeline failures.
The two latest cases were filed on behalf of the Bille and Ogale communities in the Ogoniland region. The British firm behind the lawsuits, Leigh Day, charged that Shell's pipeline infrastructure is in such bad shape that continual oil spills "caused, and continue to cause, long-term contamination of the land, swamps, groundwater and waterways" in the Ogale community.
It also claimed that pipeline breakages have destroyed the livelihood of the 13,000 residents of Bille, who traditionally fish to sustain themselves, and that the spills have grown so extensive that residents "have even been forced to stack sandbags outside their homes to try to prevent oil entering their properties."
This week's lawsuits follow an unprecedented PS55 million ($77.4 million) settlement Shell paid out in 2015 to residents of the region's Bodo community for spills that occurred in 2008.
"In papers filed in the UK court prior to [the 2015] settlement," Amnesty International wrote in a recent briefing (pdf), "Shell admitted that its previous and often repeated assertions regarding the volume of oil spilled and area affected were substantially incorrect."
"Court documents also revealed that internal emails and reports showed that senior Shell employees had expressed concern as far back as in 2001 of the need to replace oil pipelines in the Niger Delta," the humanitarian group wrote, "describing some sections as containing 'major risk and hazard.'"
Amnesty International's briefing warns investors of the UN-declared "public health emergency" created in the region by decades of spills and negligence, pointing out the company's liability in claims such as the suits filed this week and laying out a case for divestment from Shell.
The Niger Delta "has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates. The oil pours out nearly every week, and some swamps are long since lifeless," the New York Times reported back in 2010.
A Times editorial from 2014 details the darkest moments of Shell's 60-year presence in the region, a legacy the newspaper's editorial board characterizes as "devastating":
Shell discovered oil in Nigeria in 1956, and, ever since then, the people of Ogoniland have suffered from air, land and water pollution. The United Nations study found cancer-causing benzene present in drinking water at 900 times the World Health Organization guidelines. Shell stopped drilling in Ogoniland in 1993 after local protests, but its pipelines still cross the region. The 1995 sham trial and execution of celebrated activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others who had protested oil exploitation in Ogoniland remains one of the darkest blots on Nigeria's history.
"We hope that the Bodo case and this new lawsuit will spur Shell on to accept its responsibilities by cleaning up the oil spills," Frankental said, "and compensating those in the Niger Delta whose lives have been devastated by them."
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