RoguePlanet

WASHINGTON — Hoping to fend off a potential windfall profits tax, leaders of the five biggest U.S. oil companies denied before two Senate committees on Wednesday that they gouged consumers while earning recent record profits.

The Senate Energy and Commerce committees called in five oil industry captains to explain their controversial combined third-quarter profits of $32.8 billion and what are expected to be industrywide annual profits approaching $100 billion. Those profits came from American consumers who paid more than $3 a gallon for gasoline this fall and face record home-heating costs this winter.

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To the visible shock of some Republicans, all five executives said under questioning by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., that they don't need the $2.6 billion in tax credits contained in energy legislation that President Bush signed over the summer. Wyden plans to try to revoke those tax credits.