Remove Subsidies to Oil Companies

Pres. Obama is calling for the elimination of subsidies to oil companies. He wants to apply those funds to subsidies for renewable energy companies.
    
Wikipedia says, "A subsidy is an assistance paid to a business or economic sector. Most subsidies are made by the government to producers or distributed as subventions in an industry to prevent the decline of that industry". Since the oil industry is well established and essentially nobody foresees an imminent decline in the need for oil, Pres. Obama is on solid ground. He is also theoretically correct on a need for subsidies for nonexistent or fledgling companies in the industry of renewable energy. I say "theoretically", because there are other pragmatic considerations. Subsidies to renewable energy have already reached a tremendous level, and yet renewable energy now only contributes 3% to our total energy use. The essence of this is that renewable energy is not worth subsidization, or at least is much ahead of its time.
    
Another way to look at it is that a subsidy to an existing profitable company or industry decreases that company's or industry's incentive to produce more goods or services. It easily retains its profitability through acceptance of the subsidy. The net result is that subsidies to oil companies tend to reduce the availability of oil. Such shortage with respect to market demands, increases prices.
    
Another example is agricultural subsidies. Subsidies to growers are made to reduce agricultural production in order to avoid product gluts, and maintain high prices. The political justification for such subsidies is to "keep the growers in business, in case we need them in the future". This is a weak argument. Agricultural subsidies should also be eliminated, which would bring down the cost of food products. Some weak producers will go out of business, but the strong will survive, and will have continued incentive to produce more products to increase total profit.
    
However, the essence of this discussion is subsidies to oil companies. They should immediately be eliminated. There should also be no subsidies to any segments of the renewable energy industry, since renewable energy products are not be able to compete economically with oil produced by non-subsidized companies.