The Cap-and-Trade Anti-Stimulus

Memeorandum had this story up a couple of days ago regarding how cap-and-trade will affect Lion Oil in El Dorado, Arkansas.

Call it the Anti-Stimulus, but if the climate-change legislation goes through as currently written, Lion Oil will have to shut down and lay off 1,200 employees.

Steve Cousins, VP of refining for Lion Oil, testified before Congress and explained that the allowances being given to oil refineries (2%) isn't fair. He sees it as an attack on domestic refiners: "This bill's treatment of domestic refiners with respect to the allocation of allowances is simply a thinly veiled attack on crude oil as an energy source and domestic refiners as a provider of energy to consumers, farmers and truckers," Cousins said.

To continue operations, Cousins explained that his company would have to spend $180 million buying carbon credits during just the first five years of the program. Their annual net profit is on $13 million.

Not only will this cap-and-trade business force companies out of business, it will drastically increase consumer cost of energy. It calls to mind Obama's promise to bankrupt the coal industry. And have you noticed that gasoline prices are on the rise?

Yet we still can't drill in ANWR, despite ANWR being the "single most promising source of untapped domestic oil." Not that there will likely be any refineries should be tap into ANWR.

Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR) is also concerned about Lion Oil (it's in his district) and that the cap-and-trade allowances are especially unfair to refineries. Besides just Lion Oil in El Dorado, this Anti-Stimulus cap-and-trade legislation will shut down jobs throughout the country:

"Arkansas is among a group of states that includes Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri and Wisconsin - identified as the Mississippi Valley Region - that stands to suffer a 1.5 percent decline in jobs by 2030 if the legislation passes in its current form, according to a study presented at the hearing by W. David Montgomery, an economist at CRA International, a Boston economic-consulting firm."

You just THINK unemployment is high now. What will these laid off workers find to do? Sell cars? Work in the tobacco industry? Go to Wall Street? Find a job in the health care industry? I don't think those industries are hiring now. Not anymore. Maybe they can find work building windmills.