Actually, I just forgot to answer the second part.
"Just so that you can't hide behind language I will then ask if targeted tax breaks to certain industries that result in those industries paying less than other, legal and critical, ones are defensible?"
They are tax deductions - not tax breaks.
In other words, you open a part time business out of your basement making copies by hand. You have to buy $100 dollars in paper and $10.00 worth of pens. You use up the paper and pens by the end of the year. Your business has total revenue of $210 dollars per year. If you can write off the cost of the paper and pens, then your profit is $100. On the $100, you have to pay 40% tax so your profit is $60.
But imagine if some leftwinger decided that since you were not using recycled paper which means you had not gone green, he does not like you and will penalize you by not allowing you to write off your costs in a timely manner. The change to your tax deduction is that you can only deduct the cost of paper and pens at at 10% a year. This forces you to pay a much higher effective tax rate. So, from the $210 in revenue, you have $130.4 left after tax. You still purchased the $110 in supplies for your business. So, you actually cleared $20.4 dollars instead of $60.
Oil companies have a different business than manufacturing companies. So, the way tax deductions work will generally to tailored somewhat to the particular industry. Oil companies don't get preferential treatment. In the US, the companies that typically get preferential treatment are solar companies and tech companies. Some of those pay a very low tax rate or even get effectively a negative tax rate such as some solar companies. Oil companies overall pay at one of the highest rates.
I personally believe that there should be rules for determining tax deductions that are general enough that they can be reasonably applied to all industries such that there is not one set of rules for one industry and a different set for another industry.