As part of the administration effort to help the poor of this country, fight a war, and at the same time reduce the budget, they are allowing the oil companies to avoid paying royalties on oil and gas extracted from federal lands in the Gulf of Mexico. This could amount to $70 billion over several years.
Considering the extraordinarily high profits that the oil companies are producing as a consequence of the high price of gasoline and natural gas, they still need more. Instead of the oil companies using the additional profits to build refineries in the US, explore for additional sources of petroleum in the US, build additional pipelines to better distribute product, they are buying bigger and better lobbyists and distributing more money to congress (the best congress money can buy).
The administration supports the corporate donors and individuals who are willing to buy political capital.
