[wideawake]

But isn't one of the main points of corporate debt financing that interest expense is deducted for tax purposes?

But I’m no accountant.

Nor am I. But I'm going to guess that there is a difference here between actual cash flow and accounting for earnings purposes.

[thackney]

I think many people outside the industry, do not understand how greatly cost have risen for an increases in domestic oil production.

In many cases, it is the subscontractors and equipment/material suppliers that are seeing higher profits than the actual oil production companies.

On the debt/tax, I was only guessing. I don’t know, but a tax rate over 100% makes even less sense.