Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"A plus would obviously be that the government would get more tax revenue from oil companies. Some have suggested that tax revenue could be taken to either reduce gas taxes that we pay at the pump or to be invested in alternative fuel. But there are some downsides. Number one is determining what is an extra profit. Profits are determined in the market place, and there's no necessary guideline that says one is a profit too high and one is a profit too low. So that would have to be determined. And secondly, there is a concern that if you tax away high profits - companies, when they're making them - that's going to reduce their motivation to produce more of that product. In other words, one of the benefits of a company making high profits is they want to make even higher profits. They want to go out and find or produce more of that product that's given them the high profits. And of course in the case of energy companies - oil companies - that product is oil. And so there's a lot of money being spent right now by energy companies and oil companies trying to find new sources of oil. This is going on in South America, in Asia, in Canada, even here in the U.S. some old oil wells have been reopened. The concern is if you tax away that profit, you essentially would be taxing away that money that's going to that extra exploration. In fact, we did this in the 1980s. We did have a windfall profits tax on oil, and we saw as a result, domestic production fall and our dependence on foreign suppliers go up."