Congress should revoke a taxpayer-funded subsidy worth up to $1.5 billion to a research consortium that includes energy giants Halliburton Co., Chevron Corp. and others, trying to extract oil and gas from the deepest waters of the Gulf of Mexico, a consumer advocacy group said Wednesday.
The U.S. Department of Energy recently finalized a 10-year, $375 million contract with the Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America to manage research and technology for deepwater natural gas production and oil exploration efforts. The Sugar Land, Texas-based nonprofit will award contracts to universities, research institutions, national laboratories and industry partners.

But RPSEA members, including Halliburton, Chevron, BP PLC, ConocoPhillips, French firm Total SA and a dozen other publicly traded companies, could fund the entire program with 1.5 percent of their profits from 2005 alone, according to the report from Public Citizen, a nonprofit watchdog group.

The research program was created by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 signed into law by President Bush in the summer of that year. It allows the federal government to grant up to $50 million annually for the program, and for Congress to appropriate another $1 billion over 10 years.

Public Citizen said the bill was written to help steer the contract to RPSEA and that the language creating it was slipped in by congressional leaders who received hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from consortium members.

"The subsidy doled out to this consortium is an extreme example of corporate welfare for an industry that is raking in mind-boggling profits," Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, said in a release.

A representative from RPSEA did not immediately return a phone call and e-mail seeking comment Wednesday afternoon.

Based on the findings of the report, Public Citizen asked Congress to repeal the RPSEA deal and made recommendations aimed at providing greater transparency to the links between lawmakers, lobbyists and other corporate backers.

Shares of Total added 26 cents to $66.92 in afternoon trading, while Halliburton gained 32 cents to $29.12, BP rose 35 cents to $63.63, Chevron added $1.10 to $70.77 and ConocoPhillips rose $1.06 to $63.87, all on the New York Stock Exchange.