Jay Rockefeller: “today I offer a bill that is very important to my State of West Virginia, and can benefit the entire Nation. This very…”

“today I offer a bill that is very important to my State of West Virginia, and can benefit the entire Nation. This very small bill will have a very big impact on the ability of small oil and gas producers in my State and across the Nation to compete. The bill creates a new tax incentive, modeled on the old section 29 tax credit, to help small marginal well drillers. I offer this with a measure of frustration, based on the fact that while Congress managed to incorporate a great number of narrowly targeted amendments into the small business tax bill passed today, the final bill did not include this provision that I propose today. I am pleased that the tax package includes an extension of the part of section 29 dealing with facilities that manufacture gas from biomass and coal. That is helpful to a variety of States, including West Virginia. But for less than one tenth the cost of that provision, we could and should have done something to help drillers get gas from devonian shale and other nonconventional sources.”