something that nobody actually pays. but that was only up five and5. a half percent. and peterra:, we also hear now that to address the oil pricesu issue, the energy price issue, the senate senate finance committee chair ron wyden is introducing you. windfalllleyou. profits tax called something else as a 21% surtax on oil company profits that they considersur some laughing becaue considersur some laughing becaue consider excess. what do they cause the price of oil to go up?ed well, look, if we confiscated p allro of profits and distributed it to the american public, you would barely even noticey a difference. but if you take the profits out of drilling for oil, guess o what ? noo one is going to drill for oil. so we re going to have an even bigger supply problem than we have right now. but the real problem is demand. you know, youriea just mentioner that american rescue plan that was a disaster. we need toas be rescued from that plan because
senator ron widen, democrat, has suggested a 21% surtax on excess profits from the oil companies. is that one of the tools the president supports? it is a tool, i m not saying the president has made a decision about what he would support. he wants to hear from the companies first, but we note that has happened, obviously in the uk. let me remind everybody who is watching that this question of refining capacity and oil production are both global issues. global refining capacity has come offline. and we know that due to the war in ukraine, russia s ability to export millions of barrels of oil has also come offline because countries like the united states have rightfully said we re not going to buy russian oil. so the president has is looking at every tool always, and the biggest tool he has, of course, is the strategic petroleum reserve. and he has released 1 million barrels per day. but it is not enough to account for the amount of oil that has been pulled offline, due to the invasi
and now it is summer driving season, john, as you know historically during summer driving season, prices have gone up because demand has increased. we re also seeing that with china coming out of covid, we will see another increase in demand globally. but if you were in if you were in brazil, you would be paying the same amount for gas at the pump, over $5. if you were in canada, you would be paying over $6. if you were in germany, you would be paying over $8. but we re talking about the united states, though. we re talking about the united states, what the president can do. i want to be crystal clear about this, it is possible you re saying he would support a surtax on excess profits from oil companies? i m saying no tool has been taken off the table and he wants to hear from the refineries, the companies who are doing refining to see what is the bottleneck and how we can increase supply. and he s also asking, of course, for the oil and gas industry to increase supply as well, b
we heard the president talk about shipping companies when he was in l.a. about how much profit they are making. we ve heard him talk about energy companies, their record amazing profits, talking about price gouging from companies. you ve heard greed-flation, and now senator widen talking about a surtax on big oil trying to rein in their skyrocketing profits. is that feasible or is this also just a messaging move? thisis also probably unlikely to get its way through the senate. i think that this might have a bit more support in the senate among democrats. there are a lot of democrats who are really angry with oil companies, but there is definitely enough pushback from the republican side mostly, but also a little bit from the democratic side, and concern about, well, what if companies just raise prices pretax. what if they just increase the
oil companies. senator buy den is adding a surtax on companies that have excessive profits of better than 10% on the profit margin. nbc news has not confirmed that proposal, but i wonder is that something that the white house would be supportive of? would president biden back that legislation? well, i m not going to comment on a proposal that hasn t been released and hasn t been confirmed, but what i will say is we have a situation right now where the largest oil and gas companies and the companies that refined that oil into gas and other products, they are making record profits. in the first quarter of this year, the five largest oil companies have made $35 billion in profits. that s a 300% increase. if you look at the price of gas at the pump, almost a dollar of that price at the pump is explained by record profits on those refinery margins, on the amount that companies are taking