The American public needs to be educated about the difference between 'excise tax', 'excess profit tax', and 'windfall profit tax'. The term 'windfall profit tax' is being misused for political reasons.
Is there a case for a true 'windfall profit tax' today?

Iraq has officially opened the door for foreign oil companies to invest in the country’s rich energy sector for the first time in more than 30 years.Thirty-five foreign oil majors have been invited to bid for contracts to provide technical support and help boost production in eight oil and natural gas fields.

“Two-hundred dollar oil would break the back of the global economy,” Adam Sieminski, chief energy economist at Deutsche Bank AG (DB), told Bloomberg News in an interview yesterday (Wednesday) in Tokyo. “Next step after $200 would be global recession and bad news for everybody.”

Royal Dutch Shell's $7.5 billion sale to Gazprom may have been coerced by the Russian government. Vitaliy Katsenelson looks at the Sakhalin-2 sale and examines the long-term implications if Russia disregards Western investment.