By Bonnie Washuk,Staff Writer

Angry about “outrageous” oil profits while consumers forked out more for fuel in September, Maine U.S. Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are calling for some of the billions of profits to go to help the poor heat their homes this winter.

Higher fuel costs will mean some Mainers will have to choose between heat and food this winter, Snowe and Collins said. They’re calling for LIHEAP spending to be more than double the figure in President Bush’s budget.

In a letter she sent to the American Petroleum Institute, Snowe said she wants oil companies to “step up to the plate” and donate to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, a home-energy assistance program in cold-weather states.

Snowe and Collins also support Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s call for Congress to investigate why fuel prices and profits spiked after Hurricane Katrina. Frist said he may support a federal anti-price-gouging law.

And Collins is proposing an end to tax breaks that benefit oil companies, taxpayer money easily in the hundreds of millions each year, Collins said. Money the government would get from stopping the tax breaks should go to LIHEAP, Collins said.

Oil companies made record profits from July through September. ExxonMobil alone made nearly $10 billion of profits in that third quarter, which Collins called “beyond reasonable. It’s greedy,” she said during a phone interview Monday.

“At a time when low-income families are struggling to fill their gas tanks and home heating tanks, Congress should take a look at the billions of dollars of subsidies and special tax breaks given to the oil and gas industry,” Collins said.

Reps. Mike Michaud and Tom Allen back these ideas and others, including stronger conservation and alternative-fuel laws, and a crackdown on price gouging, calling the profits appalling. “For ExxonMobil to make almost $10 billion in 90 days shows that this whole energy system is out of whack,” Allen said.

A spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute said Monday oil companies are not interesting in donating to LIHEAP.

LIHEAP is a good program, but finding money for that program is a role for government, not oil companies, said API economist and spokesman Ron Planting.

Investigations into prices by Congress have come and gone, Planting said. They always conclude there was no wrongdoing, but “just the market at work.” When prices fall, there is no talk of congressional investigations, Planting said.

The profit numbers do sound big, he acknowledged, but said the third-quarter profits averaged 7 to 8 cents on the dollar. Other industries, such as banks and pharmaceutical companies, had larger margins. Oil companies are “no different than any industries,” Planting said.

The Maine delegation didn’t agree.

While visiting Bangor and Portland last weekend, Collins said she got an earful from citizens “as outraged as I about record profits. It was the No. 1 issue people talked about.”

After Hurricane Katrina, the industry insisted high prices were not price-gouging, Michaud said in a prepared statement. “Billions in record profits should make even the biggest of big oil apologists stop and wonder what is really going on.”

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