Tax that pays for oil spill cleanup trust fund expires on Dec. 31
The 9 cents per barrel tax on oil that funds the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, used by the U.S. Coast Guard to pay for cleanups after accidents like the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, expires on Dec. 31, and there are no plans to ask Congress to restore it.
At the end of November, the trust fund contained $5.8 billion, said Allen Thuring, a senior financial analyst with the Coast Guard's National Pollution Fund Center, which oversees the trust find. And that should be enough to handle oil spill emergencies for the foreseeable future, he said.
The trust fund actually is filled by four sources of money, and the oil excise tax historically provided the largest share of its money, Thuring said. But there are other sources of money for the fund, including fines charged to companies found responsible for oil spills under the Clean Water Act, recovery of cleanup costs paid out by the fund from partie responsible for spills, and the interest earned by money in the fund, Thuring said.
The trust fund was created in 1986, but it wasn't until Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act in 1990 that the excise tax was approved to fund it. The Oil Pollution Act was spurred by the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in of 10.8 million gallons of oil in Prince William Sound in Alaska.
More (includes photo gallery): http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2017/12/oil_spill_trust_fund_tax_expir.html
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She knows where I'm coming from, so she's always anxious to share her frustrations and fears. She was set off this time by the passage of this horrific tax bill - to which I had to add that it inexplicably includes drilling in ANWR and now Trump is boasting that it also shuts down the ACA - which it does not. It really is impossible to keep track without a scorecard - or DU. And the fact that we're dealing with a misinformed serial liar makes it next to impossible. 
You try to have a pleasant holiday season.................
I think my last chance at that is just now slipping away. It's started snowing here, just spent time outside clearing more from last week's snowstorm and rescuing Christmas gifts I need to wrap from my trunk. I have things to do and places to go, but the next two days don't look promising weather wise. I'm in Northeastern New York and I hate winter! 
