National Stripper Well Association Chairman Mike Cantrell said the per-barrel tax on crude oil amounts to a kick in the teeth for America’s smallest oil producers.

A statement generated by the White House Feb. 4, 2016, outlined a plan to fund a new clean transportation system by a $10 per-barrel fee on oil to be paid by American oil companies, phased in over five years. National Stripper Well Association Chairman Mike Cantrell said any proposal to create a new tax, or replace or supplement the current motor fuel tax system with a per-barrel tax on crude oil, or any other input tax, amounts to a kick in the teeth for America’s smallest oil producers.

“At a time when U.S. oil producers, workers and manufacturers are suffering from a flood of cheap foreign oil, to see the President propose a new $10 tax on American oil producers is alarming,” Cantrell said. “After years of implementing new restrictive rules by executive order and EPA overreach, the President has driven up domestic production costs while encouraging unfriendly nations like Iran to export hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil onto the world market.”

The new tax on American producers will force thousands more stripper well producers out of business, Cantrell said, and drive the American oil industry further into a decline that cannot be reversed.

However, he said, there is a way to fund the clean highway initiative while not destroying U.S. oil production.

“If the President were focusing his new tax only on foreign oil imports, to give American producers a chance to compete with the international state-owned and -controlled oil cartels who have indicated their clear intention of driving us out to take our place in the market, his proposal may have some merit,” Cantrell said. “Unfortunately, his goal seems to be the wholesale destruction of the American oil industry which will only hurt consumers, workers and our economy.”