Have you even look at the profits of oil companies over the past couple of years? Yeah just look at the profits over the last 2 years. Don't look any further though because it doesn't suit ZZZ.... argument anymore. Oil companies long-term profit margin are in line with most other industries. Actually banks rip off people much more efficiently. I will never understand these idiots who still believe in Republ. vs. Dem. non-sense
Oh yes, on average over many years, the profits may be in line with industry, which is why they don't deserve any particular tax incentives above the norm for industry in general. The solution to our energy problem is not tax incentives for oil companies to drill. Shoot, we had a wake up call over 30 years ago with the oil embargo, and nothing was done. Nothing, nada. Still, darn little is being done, as oil is not the solution, nor is corn based ethanol. The fact that we are still thinking of the internal combustion basically unchanged for scores of years is as pathetic as I can think of for a "technological" society. I remember several years ago, when gas was a little over a buck, some dems wanted a gas tax of $.50 a gallon, to have the money go to development of alternative energy. The right wingers had a conniption fit claiming that a 50 cent raise in the price of gas would kill the economy.... Several years later gas has more than doubled, and the economy, as the right wingers point out, is doing fine.... On the whole, both dems and mostly repubs are slaves to the corporations of America, including oil companies, and an executive branch composed of a president and VP who are oil men, at heart... This rescinding of some tax breaks means nothing, nothing at all for the US oil industry. Oh, and your reference to the banks is a straw man fallacy...but you probably knew that already.
Actually I think the best policy would be to give oil companies even more incentives to explore and produce but to tax oil consumption at a gradually rising level to encourage consumption. I have been against the CAFE standards and european like taxation of energy use, but I think we need to address the fact that we are sending all this money to our deadly enemies. Either we overthrow these regimes or destroy their oil fields or we cut back. Seems pretty simple to me. We have the ability to substitute alternative energy for a lot of our current useage, and I am not talking about the fraud of ethanol. Coal gassification and nuclear should become a much larger part of the equation. Of course, democrats are against both on environmental grounds.