How Congress Is Subsidizing Big Oil

"A new report by Government Accountability Office estimates the oil and gas industry will be able to avoid paying between 20 and 80 billion dollars in royalties to the government. Industry lobbyists helped secure a provision passed by Congress 10 years ago subsidizing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. We speak with Edmund Andrews, the New York Times reporter who exposed the story...

For more than a decade, lawmakers and administration officials, both Republicans and Democrats, have promised there would be no cost to taxpayers for a program allowing companies to avoid paying the government royalties on oil and gas produced in publicly owned waters in the Gulf.

Now, a new report by Government Accountability Office estimates that because of this so-called non-controversial provision, the oil and gas industry will be able to avoid paying between twenty and eighty billion dollars in royalties to the government."