The Triumph of the Drill

From:  Mother Jones 

 

Over the past century, the federal government has pumped more than $470 billion into the oil and gas industry in the form of generous, never-expiring tax breaks. Once intended to jump-start struggling domestic drillers, these incentives have become a tidy bonus for some of the world's most profitable companies.

Taxpayers currently subsidize the oil industry by as much as $4.8 billion a year, with about half of that going to the big five oil companies—ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, and ConocoPhillips—which get an average tax break of $3.34 on every barrel of domestic crude they produce. With Washington looking under the couch cushions for sources of new revenue, oil prices topping $100 a barrel, and the world feeling the heat from its dependence on fossil fuels, there's been a renewed push to close these decades-old loopholes. But history suggests that Big Oil won't let go of its perks without a brawl.

 

There Will Be Subsidies

How the oil companies hit a gusher of tax breaks

Writing Off Drilling Expenses: A century ago, drilling for oil was risky business. Start-up costs were high, and prospectors couldn't be sure they'd find crude. To encourage the nascent industry, in 1916 Congress approved the expensing of "intangible drilling costs"—pretty much any equipment used or work done—in the first year of a well's life. Today, prospectors rarely hit dry holes, but the century-old tax break remains a gusher. Oil companies can expense 70 percent of their drilling costs and depreciate the rest. Annual cost to taxpayers: $700 million to $3.5 billion.

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