Criticizing Big Oil is not what I have the problem with, in another post #62 I wrote:  

And I am sure I posted my dislike of companies like KBR, but the crack about Texas, just kind hit a nerve.  Like were are going to get what we deserve.

I don't keep up with it, drove me nuts at first, trying to decipher why oil prices do anything.  But the word I keep hearing is that OPEC is trying to stick it to Putin and get him out of the game.  Don't really care as the price of oil has more variables than the human mind or computers can account for.

And for the record, my new vehicle which has a tank 2 gallons smaller than my last one, had it's first official fillup.  I couldn't do the happy dance, but I did think about all the people who need this, right after the holidays, and that made me feel nearly as good as the $40 fill up.  My last vehicle's record was over $90, not by much, and that did not give me any comfort.  That's fumes to plum full, whereas my recent fill-up was right as the low fuel light appeared.

Your just company is some else's evil corporation.  These tax breaks, regs and other means of government protection always sound good at first and may be appropriate for the time they are enacted.  But then times change and they are no longer valid but once in place they sure are hard to get rid of.

Crony capitalism is one of the things that keeps this country from expanding faster and also increases the inequality gap.

From small local businesses all the way up to big corporations it shouldn't be who has the best relationships with politicians that decides who succeeds.

There's a reason Washington DC is has the highest per capita income in the nation.  That's where the money is.

The DPA does what depreciation does. It allows the company a reduction in taxes to be used to replace equipment/resources used in that business.

e.g. The reduction gives them additional funds to use for exploration and new drilling.

Slado - I don't know if you have ever been in or owned a business but consider this. Without the DPA/deprecation allowance replacement of worn out equipment would come directly from after tax income and that tax would have already increased due no DPA/depreciation.

Expansion would be greatly hindered.

SJ - This has nothing to do with Obama who has had nothing to do with the decrease. Unless, that is, you want to blame the reduction in demand on the extended decline in Obama's economy.

scott - Help Repubs "at" all? If that's what you meant I agree. The reduction, if they hold, will help the economy thus helping Demos.

So, suuuuper simplified, if you bought a mineral mine you can deduct from that mine's yearly gross income a percentage of the amount that you bought the mine for.

And your deduction of the cost of the mine is spread out over a limited number of years, and the total deduction over those years equals the amount you spent to buy the mine.

Waaaaaay simplified example:

Cost of buying mineral mine = $100.
Depletion is (say) 10 years (ie, 10% of mine purchase price/year) so = $100/10 = $10/year.
Gross income is $50/year.

Net income for those 10 years is $50 - $10 = $40/year.

Total deduction over 10 years = 10 x $10 = $100 = cost of buying the mine.

And, after those 10 years, you cannot deduct anymore because your previous total depletion deductions equal your purchase price ($100).

Oil and gas depletion allowances, however, are a percentage of the field's gross income, not a percentage of what you paid for the field.

And that percentage is deducted forever, it is not limited to a certain number of years.

So, let's say oil is selling for $1/barrel, and a field's yearly production is 50 barrels, and thus it generates a gross income of $50/year, and you bought the field for $100.

Let's say the oil/gas depletion allowance is 10 percent.

Your net income is the $50/year - $5(10%) = $45/year, and that $5/10% deduction is taken for an unlimited number of years.

So in this example it takes 20 years ($100/$5 = 20) for the depletion allowance to equal your purchase cost.

But if the field pumps for 40 years, the total depletion allowance you take over those 40 years is double what you paid for the field.

However, if you deplete the field in only 10 years, you only get to deduct 1/2 the purchase price. (Though if you invest in other oil fields, I would assume your remaining 1/2 of the depletion deductions can be applied to those other  investments.)

That was then and this is now, and Obama ain't talking that way no more. Instead, he regularly boasts of America's soaring oil output and points to all he's done and is still doing to further increase domestic production. Thanks to the sort of heightened investment in domestic output his administration has sponsored, he told a cheering Congress in January, "more oil [was] produced at home than we buy from the rest of the world--the first time that's happened in nearly twenty years." Although still offering his usual bow to the dangers of climate change, Obama did not hesitate to promise to facilitate further gains in domestic output.

In accord with his wishes, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced on July 18th that it would reopen a large portion of the waters off the Eastern seaboard, an area stretching all the way from Florida to Delaware, to new oil and natural gas exploration. Under the BOEM plan, energy companies will be allowed to employ advanced seismic technology to locate promising reserves beneath the seabed in preparation for a round of offshore licensing scheduled for 2018. At that point, the companies can bid for and acquire actual drilling leases. Environmental organizations have condemned the plan, claiming the seismic tests often involve the use of sonic blasts that could prove harmful to endangered sea animals, including whales. The truth is, however, that those seismic tests, by opening future fossil fuel deposits to development and exploitation, are likely, in the long run, to hurt human beings at least as much.

Here are some of the other measures recently taken by the administration to boost domestic oil production, according to a recent White House factsheet:

• An increase in the sales of leases for oil and gas drilling on federal lands. In 2013, the Bureau of Land Management held 30 such sales--the most in a decade--offering 5.7 million acres for lease by industry.
  
• An increase in the speed with which permits are being issued for actual drilling on federal lands. What's called "processing time" has, the White House boasts, been cut from 228 days in 2012 to 194 days in 2013.

• The opening up of an additional 59 million acres for oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a disastrous BP oil spill in April 2010.

In other words, global warming be damned!

In a turnaround that has gotten next to no attention and remarkably little criticism, President Obama is now making a legacy record for himself that will put the "permanent reduction of our dependence on oil" in its grave. His administration is instead on a drill-baby-drill course to increase production in every way imaginable on US territory, including offshore areas that were long closed to drilling due to environmental concerns.

What explains this dramatic turnaround?  

From what I understand, the NFL now wants to put Super Bowl halftime shows up for bid, and  essentially make the artists pay for the privilege of performing.

This type of thinking is, of course, entirely consistent with the NFL's repeated attempts to shake down the State of Hawaii to the tune of millions of dollars for the privilege of hosting the Pro Bowl, even though it was Honolulu that actually saved that game from oblivion over 30 years ago in the first place, and actually turned it into a profitable event. Never mind that we've already long been absorbing all the operating costs of putting on the game, as it is.

As far as I'm concerned, the NFL is starting to stand for "Naturally, Fleece the Locals." I hope nobody responds to their bids for further self-enrichment. It would serve them right to one day be compelled to hold the Pro Bowl in Buffalo or Kansas City during the dead of winter. That'll teach NFL players to aspire to All-Star status!

We have spent the last 13 years fighting a group of people who this administration won't even call Islamic and who almost all western leaders like Bush before Obama are terrorists who are not real Muslims.   No matter how many times they tell us they are and no matter where they get their funding and support from we don't want to acknowledge that Islam might just have a bit to do with it.   No we the secular west will decide who the real Muslims are.

To that I ask well we're does the ideology they are using come from?   We're do you find the schools and religious leaders ptacticing it, funding it and making sure it continues to drive more and more people to the war against the west?    Look no further then the home of the religion for one huge source of the ideology that is not true Islam.

How can we possibly fight against a set of ideas when we can't name it and won't go after it at its source?   What good are all the bombs and wasted life that we've produced the last 13 years?