(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Few adults in the United States would support a proposal to nationalize all the oil companies that operate in the country and run them on a non-profit basis, according to a poll by Rasmussen Reports. Only 29 per cent of respondents favour the idea, while 47 per cent reject it.

The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline reached $4.08 U.S. earlier this month—the highest level ever recorded by the American Automobile Association.

In April 2005, U.S. president George W. Bush declared, "I wish I could simply wave a magic wand and lower gas prices tomorrow; I’d do that. Unfortunately, higher gas prices are a problem that has been years in the making."

In the U.S., the federal taxes for fuel stand at 18.4 cents per gallon for gasoline, and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel. In May, Arizona senator John McCain—the presumptive presidential nominee for the Republican Party in this year’s United States election—called for a temporary suspension of the federal gasoline tax. Illinois senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee, dismissed the idea.

On Jun. 18, Bush discussed energy, saying, "We should expand American oil production by permitting exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR. When ANWR was created in 1980, Congress specifically reserved a portion for energy development. In 1995, Congress passed legislation allowing oil production in this small fraction of ANWR’s 19 million acres. With a drilling footprint of less than 2,000 acres—less than one-tenth of one per cent of this distant Alaskan terrain—America could produce an estimated 10 billion barrels of oil. That is roughly the equivalent of two decades of imported oil from Saudi Arabia. Yet my predecessor vetoed this bill."

Polling Data

Should the government nationalize all the oil companies and run them on a non-profit basis?

Source: Rasmussen Reports
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,000 likely American voters, conducted on Jun. 14, 2008. Margin of error is 3 per cent.

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