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So, typing 500 watts * 1 year * (10 cents / (kilowatt*hour)) into Google: about $482. Taking their $1,666 one year profit figure (mining profits - cost of card), it is now really a cost of $1,184. Which isn't as bad as I thought it'd be.

You mean it's a profit of $1182.

Problem is, $1182 is in the "hobby" domain, and not really enough to be considered an investment. If you think it's fun or interesting, do it. If not, don't bother since $1182 over a year isn't going to be worth the trouble.

To actually run it as a business, you'd deal with boxes like this by the 100s. You have real estate costs, heat to get rid of, infrastructure, and wages. (If you make $150k/yr as a senior eng or manager someplace, this is the wage you should consider since it's what you forego.) To make this doable, you'd have to locate someplace with cheap power and cheap real estate. And cheap, moderately skilled labor. (Need to be able to assemble and manage racks and racks of PCs.) You can probably save on the hardware costs as well since you can negotiate volume pricing. Personally, I'd put it in Washington.

As for someplace to spend money I think this is a minor concern. Heck, if I were to sit on a ton of BTC or run a large-scale mining operation I'd open a store myself if nobody else does. It would instantly increase the value of my hoard. This tells me once there's enough BTC out there this is going to happen.

Even if a mine isn't profitable today, it could be when combined with a retail business, and if BTC takes off you have a very valuable company. (Not a 'cashflow' business, but a 'stategic value' business.) OTOH, I suspect if you're not out there building a business this _today_ you've already missed the boat.

I've always thought Bitcoin was stupid, but let's do some more analysis on the energy costs here, which this site really should have included.

The best GPU perf/watt was the 5870x2 (Ares OC) at 1.584 (Mhash/s)/watt. Not sure where they got their total watt figures from, but from a review site, it is 500W, unoverclocked. This site says it's 50W more overclocked. I'll be generous and not include this since the CPU isn't being taxed as much. So 500W power consumption.

So, typing 500 watts * 1 year * (10 cents / (kilowatt*hour)) into Google: about $482. Taking their $1,666 one year profit figure (mining profits - cost of card), it is now really a cost of $1,184. Which isn't as bad as I thought it'd be.

They didn't include the effect of increasing difficulty on decreased mining speed, but theoretically the currency should become more valuable as it goes on.

Somebody's wiki link is wrong then... Since I can back it up I suspect yours is.

There's energy-efficient and cost-efficient. Electric heat is the former but not even remotely the latter.

1kWh is equal to 3,413 BTUs. At $0.1109/hWh, that's 9.0kWh/$, or about 31,000BTU/$.

As of April 11, natural gas cost $11.02/1000ft^3. At 1030BTU/ft^3, that's about 94,000BTU/$.

According to Consumer Reports, a "typical gas furnace made in the early 1970s has an AFUE of about 65 percent.", so your $1 of natural gas would get you about 61,000BTU of heat. Compared to a perfectly efficient electrical heat source, that ancient furnace would be approximately half as expensive to run. Newer furnaces can reach upward of 97% efficient, or about one third the price of electric heat.

Electric heat is only efficient in terms of energy conversion. In terms of wallet-to-warmth conversion, it sucks.

There's energy-efficient and cost-efficient. Electric heat is the former but not even remotely the latter.

1kWh is equal to 3,413 BTUs. At $0.1109/hWh, that's 9.0kWh/$, or about 31,000BTU/$.

As of April 11, natural gas cost $11.02/1000ft^3. At 1030BTU/ft^3, that's about 94,000BTU/$.

According to Consumer Reports, a "typical gas furnace made in the early 1970s has an AFUE of about 65 percent.", so your $1 of natural gas would get you about 61,000BTU of heat. Compared to a perfectly efficient electrical heat source, that ancient furnace would be approximately half as expensive to run. Newer furnaces can reach upward of 97% efficient, or about one third the price of electric heat.

Electric heat is only efficient in terms of energy conversion. In terms of wallet-to-warmth conversion, it sucks.

It's not a matter of a subsidy existing or not; we subsidize all power generation forms. The issue is that solar and wind require subsidies 15 times that of nuclear, and nearly 100 times that of natural gas. If we have only so many dollars to spend on energy generation (NOT research - generation), then let's get the biggest bang for our buck.

Solar won't become economical? Is that a joke? Have you looked at how far solar has come in the last...5, 10 years? That's not exactly a long time. Building more nuclear plants in the immediate future is not a solution when solar is getting pretty significantly efficient.

Yet we still subsidize solar and wind orders of magnitude more than nuclear, natural gas, hydro and coal. If it's so economical, why does it need 100 times the subsidies of natural gas? Why does it need 60X the subsidies of coal?

Solar and wind have a LONG way to go... In 60, 80 years they may be reliable, efficient, cost-effective, and widely-deployed so they can be the majority of our power generation. But what about the intervening decades? Should we pay 15X subsidies for wind when we could use nuclear for now?

Money is a resource, and it is somewhat limited. Buy the affordable power now, build lower cost generation while better wind and solar (and even fusion) is researched for future use.

Not too clear on that. Petroleum may indicate imports and crude oil domestic production. It is used twice here: http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/diagram1.cfm

Dunno. I have to convert from archaic units like British Thermal Units to something more standard like kWh or exajoules, and to convert "77% of domestic oil production" into something more useful, because ~50% of oil consumed in the USA is imported, and even if renewables were at "100% of domestic oil production", it does NOT imply you could swap the energy source 1:1, because you'd have significant inefficiencies converting it to a form usable for vehicles.

It's bad statistics to present most things mostly in percentages rather than provide the actual numbers. Percentages are useful for comparison, but not a replacement. If you dig into those numbers, renewable power sources are not impressive unless you include long-established and mostly maxed-out hydroelectric power and biofuels. If you express it as "% growth", then it also can sound impressive, but all you're really doing is going from a small, near-1% contribution to a slightly bigger but still small contribution when hydroelectric and biofuels are excluded.

Anyway, all the raw data is at: http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/, which includes data files in CSV format and other more digestible forms.

Let's see. The total energy consumption for January-March 2011 was 25.929 quadrillion BTU, which is 27.36 EJ. Consumption is probably the right number to use here, because the USA is a net importer of energy in a BIG way, both oil, natural gas, and hydroelectric, and supplying enough to meet that consumption is what you're really after, not merely matching domestic production, which falls short. Anyway, compared to that, renewable energy breaks down this way for the same 3 months:

Hydroelectric power: 0.795 quadrillion BTU = 0.839 EJ
Wood: 0.478 quadrillion BTU = 0.504 EJ
Waste (e.g., municipal, agricultural, etc.): 0.111 quadrillion BTU = 0.117 EJ
Biofuels:0.457 quadrillion BTU = 0.482 EJ
Wind: 0.289 quadrillion BTU = 0.305 EJ
Geothermal: 0.055 quadrillion BTU = 0.058 EJ
Solar/Photovoltaic (i.e. heating + PV): 0.026 quadrillion BTU = 0.027 EJ

Total renewable for Jan-March 2011: 2.212 quadrillion BTU = 2.334 EJ

So, by those measures all renewables accounted for 2.334/27.36EJ = 8.5% of power consumption. Take out hydroelectric and you get 5.5%, which is still respectable, but most of that is wood, waste, and biofuels, which have only limited ability to expand unless you're willing to flatten a lot more forest, burn a lot more garbage, and convert a lot more farmland with big ethanol subsidies that are net losers. Consider the "newer" renewables that everyone expects to expand in the future, wind+solar, and you're talking about 1.2% of energy production. Geothermal also makes a small contribution.

Nuclear power generation is expressed as 2.125 quadrillion BTU in the energy summary, or as kilowatt hours, 65.662 billion kWh, and 2.242 EJ. That's more than hydroelectric alone supplies. Nuclear accounts for 8.9% of energy production over that 3-month period.

In the interests of fairness, January-March isn't optimal for renewable power generation. I haven't worked out the percentages, but it is probably better if you average over the year. On the other hand, heat and power aren't exactly optional in the winter.

The reason that talk about BTUs is that they are talking about all types of energy consumption even the burning of wood in home stoves. Wood is renewable but produces carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide. Just because it is renewable does not make it green. Take a look at this http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec7_5.pdf

For three months in 2010 Neuclear produced 202,449 Million Kilowatthours. Hydro produced 63,295 MKwhrs. Solar, wind and geothermal combined produced 25,288 MKwhrs.

You should read the article you linked to, it's really quite good. In particular, this figure:

http://www.eia.gov/energy_in_brief/images/charts/subsidies_production_large.gif

which shows that wind and solar federal subsidies amount to less than 2% of the *retail* price of the electricity produced. If you think that's game-changing amounts of government pork, I've got a Bridge to Nowhere to sell you.

You really need to read. Coal today is less than 45% of American electricity
More importantly, the question is what is the trend, Look here You will see that coal use rose through the time until 2005. Then it started falling. Now, part of that COULD be the neo-con's recession. But it is not. Look at the other energy sources. THey all rose except for one year with AE.
Coal is withering. Heck, here in Colorado, we are going to tear down something like 5 coal plants and replace them with natural gas and AE.

Coal's only real chance is to convert to natural gas by using GreatPoint or other means and then piping it around the nation. Likewise, you then pump the CO2 underground, or sell it for chemical use (for example, sugar beets need it for sugar production).

You really need to read. Coal today is less than 45% of American electricity
More importantly, the question is what is the trend, Look here You will see that coal use rose through the time until 2005. Then it started falling. Now, part of that COULD be the neo-con's recession. But it is not. Look at the other energy sources. THey all rose except for one year with AE.
Coal is withering. Heck, here in Colorado, we are going to tear down something like 5 coal plants and replace them with natural gas and AE.

Coal's only real chance is to convert to natural gas by using GreatPoint or other means and then piping it around the nation. Likewise, you then pump the CO2 underground, or sell it for chemical use (for example, sugar beets need it for sugar production).

Don't forget the subsidies added in as well. When you take those into account suddenly the "affordability" of wind and solar collapses...

1226 kWh/year at an average US rate of 11.2 cents/kWh(*) is more than $13, not $1.50.

(*) see: http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html

Considering that approximately 66% of electricity in the US is generated by fossil fuels, electric cars are not really much of an alternative. Just because you don't burn fossil fuels directly in the car doesn't mean they are not dependent on fossil fuels.

Here's the source of the 66% number for the "I don't believe your number" types. http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epm_sum.html

That's bullshit and easily checked with a search. US consumed 138.5 billion gallons of gas in 2010. While Exxon Mobile made profits of $30.46 billion on $383 billion in revenue. Why are so many people compelled to be apologists for big business. I bet you believe that rapist really loved you too. I suppose it's possible that they made on $0.02 per gallon and made up the rest on t-shirt sales to corporate fan boys.

Mod parent up.

I'm always surprised at how energetic the pro-nuke zealots are on /. The fact is nuclear energy has some nasty-ass waste AND IT SUCKS. Yes I know there are other designs that don't make the 4.5-billion-year stuff. Anybody who says it isn't a big deal can volunteer to host it in their own fucking back yard (for pay of course and only provided those in the affected radius approve).

That folks say renewables will "never" work is also irritating. Some facts::
1) according to a government agency, Nuclear produces 9% of US energy, Renewables produce 8%. That's not the huge difference some would have you believe:
http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/renew_energy_consump/rea_prereport.html
2) More than half our the US trade deficit is due to Petroleum imports:
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2011/06/trade-deficit-decreased-to-437-billion.html

Please note these facts stand quite independently of any controversial discussions about the environment or evil petroleum dictatorships.

More importantly, whatever happened to innovation? People moaning about the government funding research in renewable energy while they drive their Hummer and watch the Miami Heat on their giant screen plasma TV while they play Playstation over the Internet need to STFU. If it weren't for government-funded innovation, there'd be no Hummer, no computers, and no Internet.

Paying for research is good. It makes things better for everyone. Clean energy is good because it doesn't leave nasty shit behind (as much anyway). Lastly, you can make money building it and exporting it. Surely people on /. can appreciate that.

At least in the US, we subidize solar and wind about 15 times more than nuclear, and nearly 100 times the subsidies granted to natural gas. Germany is obviously different, but in some nations solar and wind exist solely on the strength of the subsidies; they would lose quite a bit of money if not provided with large Government subsidies.

Cutting back on nuclear power phases out plans for new, far more safe reactors that even recycle their own fuel and have enough fail-safes to survive virtually any disaster. So we rely on old reactors still from 60 years ago using incredibly outdated technology. No wonder the shit breaks.

You also have to consider the fact that no technology to this date is nearly comparable capacity-wise to our nuclear power infrastructure. Nuclear power plants account for slightly more than 1% of the total number of utility power generators in the United States (66 nuclear generators out of 6,274: EIA), but they account for around 20% of our nation's total generation capacity (EIA). So basically, we CAN'T stop using these aging nuclear reactors until we build new nuclear reactors or devise a way to complete the impossible task of replacing their huge capacity with a different technology.

Nuclear power is necessary. Sorry folks.

Cutting back on nuclear power phases out plans for new, far more safe reactors that even recycle their own fuel and have enough fail-safes to survive virtually any disaster. So we rely on old reactors still from 60 years ago using incredibly outdated technology. No wonder the shit breaks.

You also have to consider the fact that no technology to this date is nearly comparable capacity-wise to our nuclear power infrastructure. Nuclear power plants account for slightly more than 1% of the total number of utility power generators in the United States (66 nuclear generators out of 6,274: EIA), but they account for around 20% of our nation's total generation capacity (EIA). So basically, we CAN'T stop using these aging nuclear reactors until we build new nuclear reactors or devise a way to complete the impossible task of replacing their huge capacity with a different technology.

Nuclear power is necessary. Sorry folks.

India:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf53.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_policy_of_India

China:
http://world-nuclear.org/info/inf63.html
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-05/26/content_12580470.htm

China is starting to suffer brownouts due to policy to limit coal. China is using 50% of world coal production.

http://www.worldcoal.org/resources/coal-statistics/
http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/ieo/world.html

I will disagree with EIA about coal in China. There is currently a new policy that says no more new coal power plants unless they replace old coal plants. New coal plants have to be more efficient too (eg. combined cycle, or coal gassification). China will also run out of its coal reserves within 30 years at current extraction rates.

China cannot grow coal because lack of the resource - they are become one of the largest importers of coal. This is expecting to cause brownouts this summer,

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/05/energy-shortages-spreading-rationing-in.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/30/us-china-power-price-idUSTRE74T1TG20110530

http://www.cnbc.com/id/43219200

I ask not to argue, but to have something to slap in the faces of all the treehuggers...

You can say I am a treehugger - a nuclear treehugger ;) I view fossil based energy sources as vastly more damaging than nuclear. I would prefer that fusion be available, but alas, you have to do with what you have. Renewables are OK but there is a problem when you have 8 billion people and each one wants to have their energy (transport, heat, air conditioning, food, etc).

Energy independence is paramount and if nuclear is the only option for base-load non-CO2 emitting energy source, then I have no choice but welcome nuclear.

Frankly, I don't know what the "green" crowd (anti-everything crowd these days - can't call them rational anymore) wants. In Germany now they are protesting that they don't want the power lines to move power from north to south because they look ugly.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13257804
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,757658,00.html

My best educated guess is because oil and coal are not only lobbied by the industry players, but also by very powerful suppliers (look at prince bin Talal's short game of keeping oil just cheap enough that US doesn't build more fuel efficient cars).

Everyone's heard of BP, Chevron (This guy also in top 15 for coal in America), ExxonMobil, Shell, etc. But I can't even find an agreed upon list of names to put on a "Big Uranium" Top 5.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermajor
http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/coal/page/acr/table10.html

Making up stats is fun, I guess, but Oregon has it's energy production made up in the following manner:

Coal: 39%
Hydro: 38%
Natural Gas: 15%
Biomass: 3%
Wind and Geo: 1%

(source: http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/CONS/docs/EnergyUseOR.pdf )

Also, you might try to make the point that the single coal-burning generation station is in Boardman, OR; which is ~100 miles from Prineville. However, you'll see from this map that Prineville is right next to a natural gas hub, and two hydro generating stations on the Deschutes River.

So, please cite where your 60% figure comes from? Thanks.

That's pretty much the conclusion I've reached. By cost, solar (20-45 cents per kWh) is currently nonviable except for places with extraordinarily high electricity costs (e.g. the more remote islands of Hawaii) or extraordinarily strong and consistent sunshine (e.g. the desert Southwest U.S.). Wind is getting there, down to about 7-12 cents per kWh wholesale, compared to 3-5 cents for coal.

But the biggest problem I think people are overlooking for wind is the sheer scale of the wind farm you need to replace a decent-sized power plant. Roscoe Wind Farm is the largest wind farm in the U.S., with 781.5 MW peak capacity, 627 turbines, covering 400 km^2. Note however that that's peak capacity - how much electricity the farm generates under ideal conditions if each turbine is running at maximum power and efficiency. In practice, the average power generation from land-based wind farms has been about 20%-25% of peak. Be generous and go with the high 25% capacity factor. So 627 turbines and 400 km^2 gives you 195.4 MW of power on average.

A single AP1000 nuclear reactor generates 1154 MW. Figure maintenance and other reasons will drop that to about 90% capacity factor, or about 1000 MW. A plant will typically have at least two so one can remain operational while the other is shut down, so 2000 MW for the plant. How big would the wind farm need to be to replace that?

2000 / 195.4 = 10.3x bigger. To replace two AP1000 reactors will require nearly 6500 turbines covering over 4000 km^2. Each turbine requires 100-200 tons of steel, so that's around a million tons of steel. I don't even want to think about the transmission lines needed to string them all together. And wind turbines cost about $1.2 - $2.6 million per MW of peak capacity. Since this hypothetical wind farm has ~8000 MW of peak capacity, that's $9.6 - $20.8 billion in construction costs. The AP1000 reactors are estimated to have a total construction cost of about $4-$5 billion each. So $10 billion for two of them would actually line up with the low end of an equivalent wind farm's construction costs.

4000 km^2 is about 1% the land area of California. In 2010 California generated about 200 TWh of electricity, or an average of 22 GW. So even if you assumed lots of areas are as wind-productive as Roscoe Wind Farm, and that we developed some technology which could store 100% of generated electricity for later use, California would need to cover 11% of its land area with wind turbines to replace its current electricity generation with wind. That's a bit far-fetched to say the least.

Wind and to a lesser extent solar are not the panacea a lot of people seem to think they are. They're going to primarily be supplemental power generation technologies for a long, long time. My hopes had been on deep well geothermal, but that's run into significant problems of its own.

You can stop gasoline sales right now and it won't make the slightest difference in oil consumption.

That's ludicrous on it's face. Per Wikipedia, in 2003 the US consumed 476 billion liters of gasoline. And you're going to tell me that if consumption of gas dropped to zero tomorrow, oil consumption wouldn't change at all? The answer's in your own post: oil companies would stop alkylation and reforming, meaning that the components of petroleum that used to be converted to gasoline would now become available for use as diesel, kerosene, etc. Which means that less oil would be required

Check this page for more details. You can see that gasoline accounts for around half of all "finished petroleum products" consumed in the US. If we stopped using gasoline, we could pump much less oil, because we wouldn't have to convert other hydrocarbons into gasoline - we could just use them for heavier fuels, chemical feedstocks, etc.

That's true if you stick to crude oil -- if you add up totals from regions or economic cartels (not all of OPEC is Middle East), then the numbers are different. It doesn't change the fact that Canada's supply of oil to the US ~doubles that of Saudi Arabia, which people in the US strangely don't often know. If you also add in natural gas and hydroelectric power imports, it isn't an exaggeration to say that Canada plays a large role in keeping the lights on in the USA. Unlike oil, natural gas and hydroelectric power aren't as easily fungible.

NG is currently commercial price is $6 / 1000cubic feet for 1 million BTU's worth. Diesel is 2.39 for 130,500BTU.
so Diesel price is around 2* more expensive at commercial. Retail price (NG to your home) brings that down to Diesel 15% more expensive.

I don't know about paper, but I'd guess that shipping prices are highly correlated to the price of diesel. And, as you can see here, it's about triple what it was 10 years ago. That cost isn't just factored in to getting the book from the distributor to the store where you buy it, but in every step of the manufacturing process where something has to be moved from one place to another. And it's not like business to just eat those costs, so they pass them on to you.

Now imagine if the entire process of making a book were electronic. There's no reams of paper to ship to print it on, no sending the book from the distributor to the consumer. All of those shipping costs are now nil. The million dollar question is: what portion of the price of a book is shipping?

He's using the standard definition of "peak oil", you know when production rate hits its maximum. Which has exactly nothing to do with how much is in the ground - it's how much is being extracted.

So here's the chart: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS1&f=A

It's seems pretty obvious that peak oil for the US was in 1970. Sure we may ramp up production in the future in which case that'll just be a local maxima and not the actual peak. But it has been 40 years so far...

Wiki refs a Texas Transportation Institute study that says 5.7 billion U.S. gallons were lost due to congestion in 2007. This works out to 371,819 barrels/day of oil, which would be 1.9% of the 19,278,000 barrels per day we used in July 2010, or 4% of the finished motor gasoline. These numbers from the DOE's Energy Information Administration. I always thought traffic congestion must gobble up some huge amount of fuel, but it's actually more like the output of a few offshore oil fields. Still worth addressing, but I think encouraging HOV lanes and the like are more the idea.

The International Energy Agency published a good doc on Saving Oil in a Hurry (pdf). Lots of pertinent info therein.

Yes, there is something wrong. There's 20 million barrels or so of highly flammable material being supplied to the United States every day, of which the Gulf of Mexico supplies about 1.6 million from over 3000 production platforms and sub-sea installations, another 5 million barrels/day is supplied from production on land, and the rest is imported mainly by tankers and pipelines, all of which have a tendency -- regardless of safety precautions -- to occasionally explode due to their flammable nature. It's a rare occurrence given the quantities involved.

Perhaps someone should do something about decreasing those numbers, as some people have been suggesting for the last 4 decades, but until that happens (or unless you want to go to 100% imports instead of only >50%), there's going to be domestic production where accidents could happen in your neighborhood. Even if you went to 100% importation from elsewhere you'd still have accidents while handling the product.

The only reason you've probably heard about this accident is due to media attention to the BP oil spill. In fact, another accident occurred earlier along the Gulf Coast in July when a barge decapitated the top of a non-producing oil well. Again, the only reason that got national/international attention is probably due to the attention already drawn to the region, otherwise the story probably wouldn't have gotten much further than Louisiana.

So, let's ignore the vagaries of media reporting or non-reporting and look at some actual numbers. The statistics for the Gulf of Mexico in the last four years imply that fires/explosions are fairly common (over 100 of them per year), but that's at any scale, including very small ones that don't involve evacuations of platforms and where safety equipment and procedures worked to promptly put out the fire. Fatalities range from 4 to 11 in the Gulf of Mexico (and there are at least 11 in 2010 due to the BP / Macondo well accident). Spills >50 barrels are fairly uncommon -- between 4 and 10 a year, although again the size varies enormously, as we've seen this year. Loss of well control incidents -- these are the serious situations when the pressure in the well requires engaging the blowout preventer or other safety equipment -- number 2 to 8 per year. Any one of those might have turned into another BP oil spill if not handled properly.

So, is "twice in a year" unusual? Probably not, but it depends where you draw the line between significant and insignificant accidents, the BP incident being an extreme outlier case not seen for decades (since the Ixtoc-1 accident in 1979, which was in the Gulf of Mexico but on the Mexican side). Browse through the documentation and judge for yourself, although there aren't yet enough details reported from this new one to tell if it is really exceptional. We'll know in the next day or so.

You may as well express your utter shock that there has been a commercial airliner crash TWICE in one year. Unusual? No, not really. Rare accidents happen even with excellent and responsible safety precautions, especially with so much traffic. It's a hazard of doing business at all.

If it's any consolation, this platform is on the continental shelf (i.e. shallow water) and will therefore be much easier to deal with.

Any evidence to back this up? Or are you just guessing?

I think it's the latter, plus a bit of the former. ;) This post has a chart of subsidies of various energy firms. This post with punny headline states the case for marginal producers: Vladimir's Energy Blog - Obama’s Energy Tax Will Even Tax Strippers TIME had this also LOL (unintended, I assume) headline in 1944: OIL: Subsidy for Strippers. "I call for a fixed deductable on pasties!"

Little of the subsidy cash would go to the big integrated companies. (They and the Oil Congressmen prefer Mr. Ickes' plan for a price boost.) OPA tailored its plan to fit only the small operators of the 200,000 "stripper" wells—the marginal producers who turn out some 15% of all U.S. oil. Squeezed between rising costs and OPA's ceilings many a stripper has been forced to plug his wells and go out of business. And once plugged, the wells are often ruined by salt water seepage.

So even 66 years ago these minor operators were making a substantial contribution to supply, and wanted some assistance to make their operations economical. We could have told them to just take it up the hindquarters of course, but that was way ahead of real consideration of the negative implications of using hydrocarbons. No other nation has drilled anything like the number of wells the US has: Distribution and Production of Oil & Gas Wells. Wells long given up for dead are reopened when the price rises high enough; some of the oldest in the country were fired up in 2008 when the price was on its uptick. We could repeal subsidies, but then the US would have to import more to make up for lost domestic production, putting us in competition with other nations and driving the price up to the point where the wells would be economical again anyway...likely there's a sweet spot somewhere. I'm not in favor of subsidizing the majors much, either. But these small fry are worth helping out while we transition away to something better. I'm waiting for the NOCs around the world to follow the US example, if that's possible given their societal constraints. Seems like a surefire way to boost their production and mitigate their declines a titch.