Interesting article on pulling fossil fuel subsidies

[Muy Largo]

Pay attention Sir Hedonist. I chuckle at South Dakota's Republican governor, Kristi Noem, a MAGA darling, while throngs of right wing loyalists applaud her phony calls for freedom and independence from government. Her state relies on federal "subsidies" more than any other state in the union. Her sidearm and horseback persona masks the fact that she's really a farmgirl. Yeah, feeding the citizens of our great nation a steady diet of subsidized corn and soybeans to create healthy foods, especially processed sweeteners. Mrs. Noem's quaint farming operation in northeastern South Dakota received some $4.5 million in subsidies since 2000. Farmers are notoriously Republican, if you didn't know. They were Democrats until all the things they needed had been delivered by Democrats -- rural telephone, paved roads, mail delivery, rural water systems and cooperatives -- and yes, those services were "subsidized" to make it possible for people to inhabit rural agricultural America, where I live. When farming became a sterile industrialized business with monoculture running wild they went Republican. So have most extractive industries that require lots of pollution and natural resource degradation. It's similar to how the Deep South changed its political affiliation from Democrat to Republican when the Democrats championed civil rights. That's today's lesson in hypocrisy and subsidies. One last thing, you need to examine the essential ingredients to what makes up a habitable environment: healthy air, healthy water, healthy soil and healthy food. Take a look around you, and ask yourself if we're on the right track. If you answer truthfully, the next question is what can we do differently? Or, what must we do differently?

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by Muy Largo

The reasonable way to phase out fossil fuels is to shrink their subsidies. We're moving away from fossil fuels, it is obvious.

What subsidies? They are insignificant. They always were insignificant. You eliminate them and that will have "0" effect on the industry.

Are you actually talking about tax breaks and not subsidies? Well eliminate percentage depletion and expensing of intangible drilling costs (IDC's) and you still wouldn't significantly shrink the industry. Large companies can't take the percentage depletion deduction anyway, and if you depreciate IDC's instead of expensing them, you only delay the cash flows, you don't reduce them.

And as I've already pointed out, severance taxes, which oil companies pay but no one else does, more than make up for percentage depletion and expensing of IDC's.

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by Muy Largo

When farming became a sterile industrialized business with monoculture running wild they went Republican. So have most extractive industries that require lots of pollution and natural resource degradation. It's similar to how the Deep South changed its political affiliation from Democrat to Republican when the Democrats championed civil rights. That's today's lesson in hypocrisy and subsidies. One last thing, you need to examine the essential ingredients to what makes up a habitable environment: healthy air, healthy water, healthy soil and healthy food. Take a look around you, and ask yourself if we're on the right track. If you answer truthfully, the next question is what can we do differently? Or, what must we do differently?

Are you willing to live without electricity, gasoline or diesel? Because without exploiting natural resources you're not going to have any of those. If you think the environmental degradation you saw during your Sunday afternoon drives through eastern North Dakota was just horrible, I'd hate to see how you react to the cobalt, lithium, nickel, iron ore and coking coal mines and processing facilities in the Congo, Peru, Indonesia, and Australia, which provide the materials for renewable energy.

And if you think our air, water and soil are filthy, well, you're just not right. Maybe a trip to Asia is in order too.

I'll agree with the healthy food part though, not because I believe we all ought to be eating organic and non-GM food, but because we eat too much junk food.

We were most definitely on the right track -- a well balanced approach to industry, energy and the environment, including huge reductions in carbon emissions because of the substitution of natural gas made viable by fracking for coal -- until about a month and a half ago.

[bf0082]

Originally Posted by HedonistForever

OK, but not to the point where our fossil fuel production decreases to a point that we go back to dependence on OPEC which could very well happen under the Biden administration.

Uh, why on earth would anyone confuse the USA, a net exporter of oil, dependent on OPEC oil, thats so 1970's

Why are you people confusing buying cheap oil from the middle east as oil dependence, its an easier way for businessman to earn a quick buck by refining it and selling it overseas.

You have a kitchen sink with water, may cost about 3 cents per gallon. Im outside your house selling ice cold water for 2 cents per gallon. you save the 1 cent from pouring it from your sink and the extra cost of cooling it with ice. A huge profit opportunity to those near ports.

When Republicans talk, low interest rates, low gas, high profit stock market, I know they haven't a clue on what drives an economy and you sir, suggesting buying foriegn fuel is bad is ignorant at best.

[Muy Largo]

Tiny,

Of course, tax breaks are subsidies. Economists routinely categorize them that way. But it's not just tax breaks. There are other types of "subsidies". Recall the wonderful Keystone pipeline that crosses the northern plains. The pipeline's promoters promised regulators there would be zero problems. A couple years later, after a dozen leaks, taxpayers had to underwrite serious mitigation projects. This happens all over the planet.

According to ESSIE (not a treehugging research group):
...But rather than being phased out, fossil fuel subsidies are actually increasing. The latest International Monetary Fund (IMF) report estimates 6.5 percent of global GDP ($5.2 trillion) was spent on fossil fuel subsidies (including negative externalities) in 2017, a half trillion dollar increase since 2015. The largest subsidizers are China ($1.4 trillion in 2015), the United States ($649 billion) and Russia ($551 billion). According to the IMF, "fossil fuels account for 85 percent of all global subsidies," and reducing these subsidies "would have lowered global carbon emissions by 28 percent and fossil fuel air pollution deaths by 46 percent, and increased government revenue by 3.8 percent of GDP." An Overseas Development Institute study found that subsidies for coal-fired power increased almost three-fold, to $47.3 billion per year, from 2014 to 2017.

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by Muy Largo

Tiny,

Of course, tax breaks are subsidies. Economists routinely categorize them that way. But it's not just tax breaks. There are other types of "subsidies". Recall the wonderful Keystone pipeline that crosses the northern plains. The pipeline's promoters promised regulators there would be zero problems. A couple years later, after a dozen leaks, taxpayers had to underwrite serious mitigation projects. This happens all over the planet.

According to ESSIE (not a treehugging research group):
...But rather than being phased out, fossil fuel subsidies are actually increasing. The latest International Monetary Fund (IMF) report estimates 6.5 percent of global GDP ($5.2 trillion) was spent on fossil fuel subsidies (including negative externalities) in 2017, a half trillion dollar increase since 2015. The largest subsidizers are China ($1.4 trillion in 2015), the United States ($649 billion) and Russia ($551 billion). According to the IMF, "fossil fuels account for 85 percent of all global subsidies," and reducing these subsidies "would have lowered global carbon emissions by 28 percent and fossil fuel air pollution deaths by 46 percent, and increased government revenue by 3.8 percent of GDP." An Overseas Development Institute study found that subsidies for coal-fired power increased almost three-fold, to $47.3 billion per year, from 2014 to 2017.

Muy Largo, I disagree with your belief that tax breaks are subsidies, and I believe the oil and gas industry pays more than its share of tax because it and it alone is burdened by severance taxes. However, you're downright reasonable compared to the IMF. In their paper, which you're referring to, they define subsidies as "fuel consumption times the gap between existing and efficient prices (i.e., prices warranted by supply costs, environmental costs, and revenue considerations)". In other words, they arbitrarily determine environmental "costs" of fossil fuel production, and call it a subsidy. The $649 billion is not a subsidy. It's a made up number.

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/...stimates-46509

Subsidies are a problem, as stated in WTF's article, not in the USA, but in other countries.

I'm kind of confused about your Keystone Pipeline comment. I thought Biden killed that. The province of Alberta alone sunk about $1 billion into it that it will never get back. I don't know how much more TC Energy, the outfit that was constructing the pipeline, lost. That's not a subsidy. It's kind of the opposite of a subsidy, more like theft by the federal government. So now all that Canadian oil can be transported by truck and rail, which costs more, pollutes more, and is more dangerous than pipeline transportation. Or maybe they'll build a pipeline to the Canadian west coast and ship the oil to China. That's oil that we might need if the Democrats shut down fracking and we become dependent on the Middle East again for crude supplies.

[dilbert firestorm]

a bunch of california cities/towns are banning new gas stations. they want to speed up the EV process.

[bf0082]

Originally Posted by Tiny

Or maybe they'll build a pipeline to the Canadian west coast and ship the oil to China. That's oil that we might need if the Democrats shut down fracking and we become dependent on the Middle East again for crude supplies.

you make up information as you go ?

Fracking wasn't profitable, the pipeline isn't profitable.
In 2010 the break even was $75 a barrel oil. over time they reduced the cost to $57

The market dictates if they draw oil from the sand fields, not some political group. When OPEC brings Iran back in, oil will drop under $50 a barrel and make the pipeline useless... lets not let facts ruin a good democrat bashing.

You are getting close to coming to the conclusion that high oil prices makes for a better economy, that info might fly by over your head though, so watch for low flying objects.

[lustylad]

Originally Posted by bf0082

you make up information as you go ?

Fracking wasn't profitable, the pipeline isn't profitable.
In 2010 the break even was $75 a barrel oil. over time they reduced the cost to $57

Got a link for those numbers? Or do you make them up as you go?

The cost of transporting oil by pipeline is cheaper than the railcars and other overland modes they are using now. Are you seriously suggesting TC Energy has been fighting for over a decade for a project that didn't make economic sense in the first place? Where do you get your information?

Omly an idiot would make a sweeping, ignorant statement like "fracking wasn't profitable". The economics of every well and every field are different.

But then, aren't you the guy arguing that the goal of net US energy independence proclaimed by the last 9 Presidents (and finally achieved under Trump) was foolish and imprudent?

The real question is - what makes you a sucker for every bad idea and dumbass argument that comes down the pike?

[WTF]

Originally Posted by Tiny

I'm kind of confused about your Keystone Pipeline comment. I thought Biden killed that. .

Biden killed the XL portion of Keystone. Are you familiar with how they get this oil? They basically raze mountains.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Pipeline

[WTF]

Here is a good read.


https://grist.org/article/this-could...ian-tar-sands/

The future of the Canadian oil sands industry is clouded with uncertainty because of simple economics. In today’s marketplace, there is little confidence oil prices will rise high enough to keep the oil sands profitable. And a flood of U.S. oil — one of the biggest reasons gasoline and crude oil have been cheap over the past two years — is sucking the life out of Canada’s oil industry.

“Frankly, for this reason, and because of longer-term trends toward cheaper renewables coupled with carbon pricing, the oil sands is likely a dead industry,” said Thomas Homer-Dixon, chair of global systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Ontario.

[lustylad]

Originally Posted by Muy Largo

Of course, tax breaks are subsidies. Economists routinely categorize them that way.

Wrong. Generally speaking, a simple tax deferral, as opposed to a permanent reduction, isn't a subsidy. And if a tax break is available to everyone, then no one is being subsidized.

[WTF]

lustylad, it appears Milly23 has you pegged



.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by Muy Largo

Pay attention Sir Hedonist. I chuckle at South Dakota's Republican governor, Kristi Noem, a MAGA darling, while throngs of right wing loyalists applaud her phony calls for freedom and independence from government. Her state relies on federal "subsidies" more than any other state in the union.

She will get politically smacked across the head if she tries to take her lies nationally.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opini...umn/930472001/


Given that Kristi Noem is now the national face for estate tax repeal, it would be reasonable to ask these simple questions:

Why did your family not use the spousal exemption to pass along assets to your mother and avoid any estate taxes?

Did you actually get a bill from the IRS? Please show evidence of this bill and the date (redacting out any personal financial information).


Did you actually get a loan from a third party to pay the taxes and from where?

If the government is so tyrannical, why has your family cashed over $3.7 million in taxpayer funded farm subsidy checks since 1995?

Losing one’s father and family breadwinner is a traumatic event. But 23 years later, this story is still being used to justify the elimination of a tax that is now exclusively paid by multimillionaires and billionaires. It applies to about 5,000 estates out of some 2.6 million deaths a year. That's two out of 1,000.

[nevergaveitathought]

I would think it depends on who you think owns the property or means of production to believe that not taxing something is a subsidy