If they don't make the profits in gas, they make them on petrochemicals.

The asphalt issue is a prime example of this: less light sweet crude being refined for gasoline creates a shortage of the sludge necessary for asphalt creation, and thusly, the price of asphalt goes up.

Profits are profits, it's the margins I'm curious about. . . and that, we'll never really know.

 

Oh yeah, evil oil companies. Lets shut them all down and not drive.

Seriously, lots of people spend (especially SUV drivers or those with long commutes) as much on gas as they spend to feed themselves. So if the oil company makes a crap load of money its supposed to be shocking?

And a gallon of gas pumped out of the ground half way across the world, shipped to the US, pipelined to a refinery, refined, and then trucked to a gas station still costs less than a gallon of milk produced in the next county.

EVIL DAIRY FARMERS!!!!!!!!!!

Now if we can only make an argument that the high milk prices are somehow Bush and Cheney's fault................

 

Lack of available corn feed due to ethanol production = higher feed prices = higher cow-related production costs



I do agree with your principle though.

 

??QFT?? please explain

the US is addicted to oil. our infrastructure is based on oil consumption. OPEC control it, and they own us all until we get a huge breakthru in green tech.

obama is not gonna start drilling and destroying our environment so we can have oil for a quarter cheaper per gallon. that idea is just kinda dum.

 

After all the news about the profits oil companies like Exxon Mobil have made recently I decided to see how other well know companies are doing. I wanted to look at the profit as a percent of revenue since this will put large and small companies on a level field. So we will use Exxon as the base line.

Exxon Mobil Revenue = $464B Profit = $45B = 9.7%

Next I wanted to see how the connected industry, automotive was doing so I looked at the 2 big public domestic makers, GM and Ford. Not much of a shocker if you have watched the news lately, both of these huge companies have a negative profit percentage of revenue.

GM Revenue = $166.10B Profit = $-22.79B = -13.7%
Ford Revenue = $161.2B Profit = $-11.52B = -7.1%

How are some of the well known retailers doing? Let

 

[quote name='trainwreck' date='Jan 30 2009, 01:57 PM']??QFT?? please explain

the US is addicted to oil.

 

link please?
I want to see for myself how this is possible.

 

"Boon" is a bit of a grandiose notion, isn't it? While I'm sure they're more environmentally sound than before, "boon?" Phewwwww. . .

Oh, and if you're going to clump Obama in on this, be my guest. . . wait, no, be a member.

 

how many links do you want?

http://www.cfact.org/site/view_article.asp...5&idarticle=241

More if you like. Well known fact for may years the rigs act like a reef supporting wildlife.

 

Nobody is saying Obama knows exactly how to fix every problem. It's also not unlike any president to look at what was done in the past and try to emulate things that worked given somewhat similar circumstances. FDR had to help fix the economy after republican rule had done what republican rules has done to us today: destroy regulations, let corporations run rampant with our tax money without repercussion, and try to get every single rule whatsoever overturned so they can do whatever they want. Such a system cannot stand because, like communism, it's antithetical to human nature. Obama is helping right the ship after it has been steered in entirely the wrong direction. FDR did this, and he remains in the top 3 best presidents we've ever had, for a damn good reason, and not just because he helped stop global fascism. It's also incumbent upon the anti-FDR types out there to prove he did such terrible things, when the 40s-early 70s saw the highest and most consistent growth this country has ever seen, before or since.

Now to the drill here-drill now stupidity. The oil companies already have tons of land they refuse to drill on, and keep begging for more, probably because it means assets for them. This is on top of the fact that it would take a long-ass time to even get production up to speed, even assuming we had the kinds of reserves the ME does, which we don't. Oil's time has come, and we are only seeing the beginning of what modern technology can do for us.