Nobody wants to see their gasoline taxes go up, but the federal excise tax on gasoline has remained at 18.4 cents a gallon since 1993. Could it play a role in helping to get tax reform approved and should it be adjusted at least for inflation? Lucian Pugliaresi, Larry Goldstein, and Will Pack take us through a short analysis on the gasoline tax, its upside as a revenue raiser and potential instrument for regulatory reform in the transportation fuels sector and its downside as a regressive tax. The paper can be found here.

Larry Goldstein and Lucian Pugliaresi comment on the proposed Border Adjustment Tax, the so-called BAT.  Larry is a  member of EPRINC’s board of trustees and its past president. Lucian Pugliaresi is President of EPRINC.  Their commentary can be found here.

EPRINC’s RFS compliance calculator has been released as a free download on Apple’s App Store.  Now you can model various RFS and refined product market scenarios until your thumbs fall off.  The app is optimized for iPhone 5/5s and compatible with iPad.  

Download the full letter to Secretary Chu (pdf)

We welcome the opportunity to comment on the report prepared by National Economic Research Associates (NERA) for the U.S. DOE on the benefits of U.S. LNG exports. NERA concluded that for a wide range of scenarios,  

…… the U.S. was projected to gain net economic benefits from allowing LNG exports.  Moreover, for every one of the market scenarios examined, net economic benefits increased as the level of LNG exports increased.  In particular, scenarios with unlimited exports always had higher net economic benefits than corresponding cases with limited exports.