Opec's export revenue expected to beat US income tax collection

Seattle: The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) is pulling in more money from oil sales than the US government is raising from individual taxpayers.

Opec's export revenue will surpass what the US raised last year in individual income taxes. The group's revenue may reach $1.17 trillion this year, edging US personal income tax receipts for the first time since 1980, when gasoline shortages and the Iranian hostage crisis transfixed the country.

The scale of wealth at stake helps explain why offshore oil drilling is the subject of renewed debate in Congress, while business leaders including oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens back crash courses in renewable energy.

As rising gasoline prices hobble US companies from General Motors to Starbucks, Middle East investors are accumulating stakes in global banks and purchasing icons like New York's Chrysler Building.

"This is potentially an empire-ending problem," said Robert Zubrin, author of Energy Victory, a prescription for US energy independence. "We're being brought low, and at the same time, someone else is being built up."

Over three years, the 13 Opec members, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, might bring in $3.5 trillion. That's almost equal to the market value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the benchmark US stock index.