Federal Energy Incentives for Oil Companies?

Seems like one of the most frustrating things you could read about, especially in these turbulent times and what is currently going on in the Gulf.  Yet, the more digging we’ve done, the more we have found about oil companies both domestic and foreign (yes even BP) have all sorts of fancy, large, and wonderful federal incentives written just for them.  A case of government and oil lobbies being buddies?  Indeed.

Before we get too far into this, let us pay our respect and attention to the current oil spill crisis.  PBS has put together a fantastic widget to help us quantify and understand the magnitude of the damage to the gulf.

As you can see in the video footage, it is by no means a ‘spill’ but is much more akin to spewing, belching, absolute rocketing from the bottom of the earth. Furthermore, the ticker is frightening even when the slider is on the far left at the most conservative efforts.

So what’s being done about this? No, we’re not discussing the actual cleanup and the efforts to plug up the hole, we’re actually discussing what is being done in the USA and elsewhere to reduce the power and clout that the oil lobbies have in most countries. Recent developments in the Obama administration have been ambiguous at best. They want to show strength so they impose a ‘moratorium’ on deep water drilling for now, but at the same time this is killing the economy and the thousands of people employed to work directly or indirectly with this industry.

Here’s our simple outline and solution. Displacement. Slowly ween the oil company incentives away from the oil companies and put them into the hands of the alternative energy companies. Sometimes tough love is the only solution, and in this case, the oil companies need a lot more than tough love. In fact, it’s curious that we don’t see more forward thinking from the oil companies investing and developing alternative energies. Do they think that things will NEVER change?

Here’s some companies and industries we would like to see some federal incentives sent to:
http://petroalgae.com/
http://www.originoil.com/
http://www.algalbiomass.org/
http://www.nationalalgaeassociation.com/

These groups and companies are involved in the fascinating and exciting world of developing oil from algae. Yes, you read that correctly. Not only is it possible, its plausible, and if the proper funding and technologies can be utilized, it can be a realistic and scalable solution to creating efficient oil.

Federal energy incentives for oil companies? It’s enough to make anyone sick. Let’s push among friends, family, and our regions for more intelligent and forward thinking federal tax incentives for alternative energy companies, from wind to algae.