by Noreen Nielsen
BP announced early this morning that its third-quarter profits more than doubled as a result of high oil prices, earning them $4.9 billion, and bringing their total profits earned in 2011 to nearly $16 billion. A is quick look at some other key facts:
- BP has spent over $3.7 million on lobbying Congress in 2011.
- BP has made over $65,000 in political contributions in just 2011, with 70 percent of contributions going to Republicans.
- BP is sitting on $19 billion in cash on hand. Added together, the Big Five oil companies — BP, Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Shell — are sitting on cash resources of $59 billion and made nearly $1 trillion in profits over the past decade.
- Despite this, BP and its other Big Oil allies continue to aggressively lobby Congress to maintain their billions of dollars in oil industry tax breaks.
Moreover, BP — responsible for the worst oil spill in U.S. history — has only paid out about $7 billion of the $20 billion fund set up to pay compensation claims to the economic victims of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Related Post: “As Gulf Coast suffers, BP Q1 profits soar to $7 billion“
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Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
Tony Hayward, the former chief executive of oil giant BP, reportedly said his new oil company Genel Energy could be interested in buying Norwegian operator DNO.
Shareholders in DNO – which, like Genel, operates in the Kurdistan region – are due to vote next week on plans to merge with RAK Petroleum, based in the United Arab Emirates.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/8849110/Genel-chief-Tony-Hayward-interested-in-buying-Norways-DNO.html
I wonder if they’ve got enough in the piggy bank now to invest a little lump in renewables? ME
Not until the profit margin changes. It is up to the people to do that. Occupy the world They are…
Sunshine on Wall Street Vampires.
CBO: Top 1% getting exponentially richer
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-20125589/cbo-top-1-getting-exponentially-richer/
Any protest will met with brutal police force and jail time.
After April 2010, there was a spate of books on the Gulf Gusher. I haven’t read any of those yet. But I’m now reading Poisoned Legacy by Mike Magner, about BP in general. It’s very good.