November 9, 2024 FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: Elon Musk attends Italy's PM Meloni's right-wing party's political festival Atreju, in Rome 89 The U.S. tax code has been awash in subsidies, tax credits, carve-outs, and other goodies for the politically favored for as long as anyone can remember. But the energy sector is a relative newcomer to the government grab-bag, with the first modest beginnings dating to the Carter administration. Initially, special treatment was afforded to corn-based ethanol, synthetic fuels (synfuels), along with wind and solar power. This was done in the name of freeing the U.S. energy sector from dependence on the chronically unstable oil-rich Middle East. But the advent of the shale revolution, with its hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and horizontal drilling in the late 2000s, made the United States the world’s leading producer of oil and natural gas during the Trump administration. Breaking News