Here we go again (again).

Just weeks after Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Ro Khanna revived the Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act, Whitehouse is now teaming up with Sen. Elizabeth Warren to repackage the same bad idea against American energy producers.

According to E&E News, Whitehouse and Warren sent letters to seven major oil and natural gas companies demanding information about profits, gasoline prices, shareholder returns, political contributions, lobbying, and communications with the Trump administration related to the war in Iran.

The senators released the letters with an explicit purpose: the information will help them assess the “scope, rate structure, and enforcement mechanisms” of the Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act.

Put simply, Senate Democrats are laying the groundwork for a new tax on American energy, which means a new tax on American consumers.

And if it all sounds familiar, it’s not your imagination.

Energy in Depth fact checked Whitehouse and Khanna back in 2022 when they pushed many of the same false claims about energy prices, oil company profits, and a windfall profits tax. At the time, Whitehouse claimed oil companies “set their own prices,” while Khanna suggested the 1980s windfall profits tax did not reduce production.

That 2022 effort wasn’t a one-off; it was the template. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent gas prices to record highs, Khanna and Whitehouse introduced windfall tax legislation, held hearings to investigate “price gouging,” and even pressed the FTC to investigate refiners for “market manipulation,” all while the Biden administration was urging those same companies to produce more. The current letters are close to a copy-and-paste of that ”political theater,” as Politico so aptly called it back in 2022.

That effort was a massive failure because there was no price gouging to find. Multiple experts, from the Federal Reserve to leading think tanks to Biden’s own Department of Energy, explained that oil trades on a global market and that no single company has the ability to control the price of crude or set the price at the pump. Washington reaches for this same accusation almost every time gas prices climb, and the investigations keep coming back empty.

Whitehouse and Khanna were wrong then and they’ll be wrong again.

Same Bad Idea, New Political Packaging

The latest letters follow the same script Energy in Depth flagged earlier this month, and the same template that Democrats used in 2022, as if taxing the companies that produce, refine, transport, and sell fuel will somehow make fuel cheaper.

The economics here aren’t in dispute.

As Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Sen. Richard Blumenthal during a Senate hearing in May, “if you tax something, you get less of it.” That’s basic economics and is particularly relevant when the thing being taxed is energy production in the middle of a global supply disruption.

Whitehouse and Warren argue that oil companies cashed in after the Iran war scrambled global energy markets. Their letters cite a figure of more than $40 billion in profits in the first quarter of 2026 for publicly traded producers, a number drawn from Climate Power, a Democrat-aligned advocacy group, alongside the sharp rise in pump prices since the conflict began.

Their framing tries to turn a supply problem into a tax problem.

But the Strait of Hormuz is one of the most important energy chokepoints in the world. When global supply (the key word here!) is disrupted, prices rise. As the U.S. Energy Information Administration clearly explains:

“Crude oil prices are driven by global supply and demand.”

That isn’t evidence that American producers caused the crisis. Instead, it points to the plainly obvious reality that consumers need more reliable energy supply, more resilient infrastructure, and policies that encourage investment. As we’ve seen in the United Kingdom, punitive taxes that make future supply harder to finance would only leave consumers more exposed to the next global supply shock, including the kind of disruption Americans just lived through with the war in Iran.

The Letters Are a Windfall Tax Roadmap

The scope of the Senate letters is also revealing.

Whitehouse and Warren are asking companies for internal analyses of profits during the Iran war, pricing decisions, dividends and share buybacks, earnings projections, political contributions, lobbying records, and communications with the Trump administration about Iran, sanctions, energy policy, and potential business opportunities.

They went further still, asking companies to put a dollar value on specific Trump administration policy actions, including permitting and leasing decisions, LNG export reviews, methane policy, vehicle emissions rules, and other regulatory changes.

This has every appearance of a sweeping political fishing expedition dressed up as consumer protection.

It also shows how the windfall tax debate has shifted. Democrats are no longer just complaining about “high” profits. They are trying to combine energy prices, foreign policy, American regulations, shareholder returns into a single partisan storyline with a predetermined villain.

That makes for a tidy press release. It does nothing to help producers respond to a global supply shock and deliver affordable energy for consumers.

A Needed-Focus on Policy Costs

The most telling part of the new push is what it leaves out.

If the goal is truly lower prices, Congress would be asking how to expand supply, protect refining capacity, modernize infrastructure, improve permitting, and cut the policy driven costs that make energy more expensive in the first place.

Instead, Whitehouse and Warren are demanding documents designed to support a conclusion they reached before they sent the first letter: that oil companies are to blame and the windfall tax is the answer.

Maybe that was decent politics a few years ago, but it is not serious energy policy.

Gas prices are shaped by crude oil markets, refining capacity, transportation costs, taxes, fuel standards, regional supply constraints, and global instability. Pretending that a windfall profits tax can override any of those challenges is a cheap partisan gimmick.

Bottom Line: This is the same playbook Khanna and Whitehouse ran in 2022: blame oil companies for global energy prices, ignore the supply consequences of punitive taxes, and sell a bad idea as consumer relief. If policymakers actually want lower energy prices, they should focus on policies that produce more energy – period.

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