Taxes

Pennsylvania’s leading oil and gas trade groups on Wednesday renewed their commitment to fighting Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s latest proposal to enact a severance tax on production, saying operators can’t absorb more costs during the downturn and repeating that there can’t be a compromise.

The West Virginia Senate is moving swiftly toward passing a bill that would terminate volumetric fees that natural gas producers pay in addition to the state’s severance tax.

The Pennsylvania House on Wednesday struck down by a wide margin Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s proposal to enact a 3.5% severance tax on unconventional natural gas production, a move that could effectively end the proposal.

In a recurring tug-of-war that the oil/natural gas industry has been fighting for years, shots were heard in recent days in California’s annual battle over whether to increase taxes on oil production.

The second of several legislative hearings scheduled for the coming weeks on a modest increase in Ohio’s oil and gas severance tax was well received by members of Ohio’s House and Ways Committee, who heard from supporters of the proposal on Wednesday.

A former hedge fund billionaire and environmental activist is attempting to stir new life into a so-far failed state legislative and ballot initiative effort to impose a severance tax on oil and natural gas production in California, the only fossil fuel-producing state without some sort of production tax.

Property assessments in West Virginia have increased 49.5% in the last eight years — to $86.6 billion from $57.9 billion in 2005 — with the highest growth coming in counties that experienced natural gas development over the same period, according to the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy (CBP).

A nonpartisan policy research group in Pennsylvania is doubling down on its assertion that the state would be better served by a severance tax on oil and gas, adding that Pennsylvania is getting “shortchanged” by the impact fee under Act 13, the state’s omnibus Marcellus Shale law.

Oil and natural gas severance taxes totaled $34.5 million in Kentucky in 2012 as the industry, which is centered in the eastern part of the state, continued its comeback from the economic crisis of 2008.