Appellate Court Slaps Down Federal Government on "Anadarko Petroleum" Oil Royalties

With the U.S. government increasingly gravitating toward socialism, it was a welcome sign to see them slowed down by the decision of a federal appellate court, which affirmed the government had no right to dig their greedy hands into the revenues generated by oil company Anadarko Petroleum.

In a case that has been closely watched by the industry and big-government advocates, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans confirmed a lower-court ruling which said the government had no authority to collect the fossil-fuel royalties, which could end up totaling up to $10 billion.

Government sychophant Shane Wolfe, a spokesman for the Interior Department, said in his talking points, "If the court's interpretation of Congress's action in 1995 is correct, certain leaseholders will be allowed to produce massive amounts of oil and gas without paying royalties to the United States without regard to the price of oil and gas -- perhaps amounting to one of the biggest giveaways of federal resources by Congress in modern history."

This is nothing more than another socialist statement. When the oil companies are doing lousy, no one cares, as soon as they start making some money, the money wants to come in and steal it and redistribute it to worthless projects or unproductive people. That is a path of destruction that whenever is interrupted, we need to be thankful for.

Look at the manipulative language given to Wolfe to repeat: "... certain leaseholders will be allowed to produce massive amounts of oil and gas without paying royalties to the United States without regard to the price of oil and gas."

All of it is an effort to make an articial barrier between people and business, in order to make people believe the government is looking out for them. An old tactic for sure, but one that works when people are afraid and looking for someone to blame, along with a savior, which the government is glad to step in as.

Look at the phrase "without regard to the price of oil and gas." It's socialist to the core.

The U.S. government, which has caused the current economic crisis through faulty attempts to run the economy, now think they're able to make any type of healthy decision on energy prices in regard to the diminishing free market?

Why this is so important is when oil companies are doing good, they can than take the revenue and do more explorations, improve operations, invest in better technology, etc. They can also set aside money for the inevitable slow times like the current economic climate, where they can survive until things pick up again.

What the government is attempting to do is syphon off the productive periods of the company in the name of "fairness," so they can use it for their endless projects and activities that do nothing to add to the national or individual wealth.

As far as the specific issue in the court case, it surrounded the terms of the lease, which were connected to oil and gas production levels, rather than price thresholds, which the government has asserted.

The court saw the obvious duplicity of the government, which agreed to the terms of the law directly connected to production outputs, and not the price threshold the government wants to arbitrarily impose on the companies drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

To show you how far the government will go to manipulate things, in 2004, according to the inept federal Minerals Management Service, the government stood to lose royalty payments as high as $60 billion.

Later on those figures were adjusted to between $6 billion to $10 billion. How does one miss estimates by 6 to 10 times over the upper reality of the numbers? Only a governmental agency could do that. Everyone else would be thrown in jail for fudging the numbers.

The so-called Government Accountability Office confirmed the lower estimate was the more accurate of the two projections.

Why throw out obvious bogus numbers? It's the old strategy of putting false information out to the public which will create an outrage based on false assertions. Even, as in this case, when the government has to backtrack, the damage is already done.

This should never have been a court case, as the terms of the lease, as the courts have confirmed, are completely being met. Idiotic lawmakers, who are looking for ways to steal more money from the public, instigated this by pressuring the court case to go forward, even wasting more of the taxpayers money.

Anothe reason government needs to stay out of the free market.