Since SB21, Big Oil has paid $2.0 billion in production taxes and we have paid and owe them $2.1 billion in cashable credits. You want to count what they pay us without counting what we have paid and owe to them. As we speak, we still owe $770 million in cashable credits and are actually trying to borrow $800 million to pay what we still owe. Imagine–we are borrowing money to pay them to take our oil!!
Even without the cashable credits considered, we got $21 billion in production taxes the five years before SB21 or $4.2 billion per year, and only $2 billion the five years after SB21 or $0.4 billion per year! This is why we have a State deficit, PFDs are being cut, and we haven’t had a capital budget worth mentioning since SB21 passed. We are getting ripped off big time.
And, before you even start–the average price of oil only went down 35% and it was before the pandemic.