Oil industry disputes proposed budget trim (Bush Budget)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/06/budget.oil/index.html

Oil drilling companies are upset that the Bush administration has proposed killing funding for oil and natural gas exploration research and development programs at the Department of Energy, an industry lobbyist said Monday.

The proposed cuts were included in the $2.77 trillion budget for the 2007 fiscal year that President Bush presented to Congress on Monday.

The proposed 2007 budget would cut about $61 million from the Energy Department's budget. It proposes eliminating a $50 million-per-year research-and-development program that was authorized in the sweeping Energy Policy Act of 2005, which Bush signed in August.

"Industry has the incentives and resources to do such R&D on its own," said a written statement from the White Office of Management and Budget.

[Coastie for Truth]

1. The oil industry does not play fairly

- funded with taxpayer money under a "CRADA" - "Cooperative Research and Development Agreement"

A CRADA is a government funded, multi-participant, research and development program. Some of the rules (in the grant)--

1. Any research you did anything on after the grants was awarded - "share and share alike" - there is a legal obligation not to hold back on the taxpayers and the other participants.
2. If you don't play by the rule - the government can "march in" and seize your results and patents.

The standard scam - rush your key research work to completion before the "grant" is official "granted." Then hold it back and black mail the other participants and the taxpayers.

With that in mind, re-read the link.

Been there, done that, have the T-shirt (and not much else).

Give the R&D money to start ups, grad students, and academicians - not to Big Oil.

[wordpix2]

2. "do such R&D on its own"---with Exxon alone profiting $10Bln in Q4 '05

I'd say BigOil can afford to pay for its own R&D.

Isn't that what the corporations want anyway? Gov't of, by and for the private corporations? Then, go R&D yourselves!