[StBernard] Oil, gas industry objects to bill

[Westley Annis]

Walter needs to be careful of what he says, since he has three years of
previous votes for people to research.

Back in either the 2004 or 2005 session, a bill was introduced that would
drop the Louisiana provision of setting the price of gas to be a certain
percentage about the rack rate.

When this bill was being discusses, Walter was against it, saying gas
stations owned by big oil companies threatened to put small mom-and-pop out
of business since they could sell their gas below cost, which the Mom and
Pop's could never do.

I still remember being amazed that he was against this bill (I could have
swore that I blogged about it, but I can't find any entries).

I think Walter sided with the oil companies himself a couple of years ago.

And for the record, I don't think oil companies are making excessive
profits.  They just make a lot of profits because they are so big.

Here's a look at the top 19 global companies, according to Forbes:
Bank of America	18%
Royal Bank of Scotland	16%
Citigroup	15%
JPMorgan Chase	15%
HSBC Holdings	14%
Barclays	13%
General Electric	13%
American Intl Group	12%
ExxonMobil	12%
Berkshire Hathaway	11%
BNP Paribas	11%
UBS	9%
Total	9%
Chevron	9%
BP	8%
Royal Dutch Shell	8%
Allianz	7%
Toyota Motor	7%
ING Group	6%
Wal-Mart Stores	3%

Westley

-----Original Message-----

"While gas prices are at an all-time high, oil companies are raking in
record profits," Boasso said. "When Bobby Jindal had a chance to bring
relief to Louisiana families at the pump, he instead sided with the oil
companies and voted to protect their profits."