They profit so much because they have up AND downtream operations, which is why they’re an integrated oil company. Do you damn research before you start ranting about this and that. They’re making so much money because various forces drove up the price of oil… they’re losing their ASS on the refining/retail side… just like every other refiner/retailer in the country.

And by not diversifying their ‘energy’ sources, the oil companies will find their stock plummeting as oil becomes scarcer and scarcer while demand shifts away to renewable resources. Better hope your fund manager isn’t asleep at the wheel.

TripleKick X Says:

Given that our government is screwing up the doomed social security system,

Given that the Right has had a hard-on for scrapping Social Security from the day FDR signed it into law, the only government that is “screwing up the doomed social security system” is Republican governments who cut taxes for their buddies, then spend borrowed money and try to cover their “fiscal responsibility” by borrowing more from the SS Trust Fund.

If left alone, SS would have more than enough to pay its obligations for decades, and any projected shortfall beyond that could easily be met by raising payroll taxes which are the most regressive federal taxes we have.

Another RW talking point body-slammed.

The Senate is going nuts on the energy issue.

If the oil companies are only making a dime a gallon of refined gasoline, how TF can they be making $11.6Billion in profits? They make money all along the way, from selling crude, to refining, to transportation and marketing. They also make huge profits from selling natural gas and other petroleum products to manufacturers as well as manufacturing their own.

I was in that business for 15 years and know a LOT more things that they don’t want the public to hear.

Buying into their propaganda much?

Exxon Pumped Less Oil on the Way to $10.9 Billion Profit

“Beneath ExxonMobil’s $10.9 billion in profits—a first-quarter record for the company and the second-highest in the company’s history—lies another number that should give pause to consumers and policymakers worldwide. The world’s largest publicly owned oil company is producing a lot less oil.”

–snip–

“Exxon accelerated its already aggressive share buy-back program, plowing $8 billion—or 73 percent of the quarter’s profits—into the company’s own stock.”

Less drilling means more profit especially when all they need do is pump the price of their stock up.

Also see Washington Post July 27, 2008, article

“Industry Gushed Money After Reversal on Drilling

“Campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Sen. John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator from Arizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his opposition to the federal ban on offshore drilling.

“Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month — three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban — compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in April and $208,000 in May.”

So McCain’s suddenly, miraculously, decided that granting Big Oil a monopoly on every drop of U.S. oil is the smart thing to do. That’s the ticket.

The current situation with oil is just a continuence of our developing transportation history. The government recognized that efficient transportation was important to the country when they made a grant to fund a section of the National Road. With popupation growth and increasing commerce our transportation methods changed also. Technology led that change begining with the steam engine that was quickly adapted to shipping and then railroads.

Railroads grew because of the land grants given to them to lay more track. Trains put a big dent in the long distance wagon business, affecting revenues in both freight and passenger business. Passenger rail service was adapted to cities, first pulled by horses, then powered by electricity as technology brought a new source of energy to the public.

But technology continued to develope, automobiles became more reliable, trucks began replacing horse drawn wagons and everybody wanted better roads. Then airplanes entered the scene and almost killed off passenger trains, again because of new technology. In all of this the government played a central roll in either funding new technologies or enacting laws that affected the direction the nation would move in.

Now it is 2008 and we have idiots like president Chimpy, candidate McSame and trolls like dopey daryll who want us to regress into a 3rd world status when we should be leading the effort to replace the old, harmful technologies based on hydrocarbons. Why hasn’t this country put maglev to use outside of Disney? Probably for the same reason that many cities replaced their streetcar systems with buses. And that reason was because automobile companies and oil companies had politicians in their pockets even then.

Then I guess they don’t need any government subsidies, either — subsidies they got by assuring the government they would assist in the development of renewable energy sources.

StratRat Says:
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Kinda strange…

They only have a couple of computers at the RNC troll bank. The trolls have to share.

If nobody does anything, the oil will be gone – or too expensive to extract – and the oil companies will evaporate as a going concern. They are drilling their way out of existance. Seems sorta backward. Why not increase your viability by using your vast resouces to find other ways to power our planet? That would be hugely profitable.

Nah, just a shift change..

Very funny…Good stuff.