November 25, 2005
The same day Members of Congress blamed high gas prices on the oil companies and their excessive profits, congressional leaders gave up trying to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
At the same time oil companies were blistered in Senate hearings because their companies earned hundreds of millions of dollars in the recent quarter of 2005, the Tax Foundation's Scott Hodge reported that in the last 25 years, oil companies paid more than $2.2 trillion (that's right trillion) in taxes to federal and state governments. That's more than threefold the oil companies' profits in the same period.