Do you mean to imply the PF is a gift from our benevolent overlords the oil companies? 

Hmm... I always thought it was a mere pittance left over from the "good old days" when they at least paid something for our non-renewable natural resource (that we own), and we weren't paying them to take our oil at a loss to the state. Something we put in place to create a savings account, and as a measure to keep politicians in check after they blew $900MM in a couple years.

To save time for some folks. I don't care if they say they can't extract at a profit. They have a less than stellar record with the truth to begin with. The current arrangement is completely stupid. My grocer doesn't pay me to take his tomatoes because I can't economically make a BLT. Not even if I call him my "parter," hire his cousin, and promise him a BLT "sometime in the future." It's not socialism, destroying jobs and the economy (like the current economic arrangement), etc, etc, etc, ad infinitum...  it's just dumb.