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Might be of interest to some on here as it's one of those things that comes up every time people are arguing about renewable energy subsidies, which are a fraction of this sum.
How are they defining "subsidy"?
This again?
The oil companies pay tax, in some countries the arrangements are different to others.
In Iraq Shell get a fix price (in the order of $2 per bbl) per barrel in profit, the rest is paid to SOC.
In the north sea they pay a % based on their operating profit.
Elsewhere they pay the governments a fixed price for the oil and the rest is profit.
Obviously if the price drops from $150 to $50/bbl those tax rates need adjusting (because when there's operating costs in the $100's of billions, you need to be making $billions to keep the business viable). Just look at the job losses in Oil and gas over the last 2-3 years.
Some people then jump up and down saying that the oil companies are being subsidized.
AMEC issued it's quarterly results a couple of weeks back, during the height of the recession 2 years ago the share price was 1200p, it's now 450p. So yup, the industry is rolling arorund like Scrooge McDuck in subsidy money, compared to the number of solar power companies that exist entirely on government money?
Well I don't know about the other countries but the section on the uk oil is grossly miss leading. Reducing tax rates and allowing costs to be tax deductible is not a subsidy.