Record oil profits

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Maybe in a fantasy world Java but not in real life application.

I could live without fire too. But is that practical today?.....No.

I am sure you realize the wide spread use of oil products in everything we use in daily life.

As I said...we can chose to consume less but we really are stuck using it. At least for now.
 
Originally Posted By: ZZman
Maybe in a fantasy world Java but not in real life application.

I could live without fire too. But is that practical today?.....No.

I am sure you realize the wide spread use of oil products in everything we use in daily life.

As I said...we can chose to consume less but we really are stuck using it. At least for now.


I sure do.

I'm also confident in my ability to live without oil should it end today. Sure, no more driving 3 miles to the parts store to get a drain plug for the car with the buggered drain plug and then back. Or a trip to just get a gallon of milk or to mail a letter.

But we would survive.

Again, our lifestyle would be DRASTICALLY different. But our ability to function biologically and socially is not genetically linked to petroleum.

Lifestyle would end, but not life.
 
One more thing, perhaps it would be a good thing for us.

1. We would become more connected as a people again. We wouldn't drive home from work into our attached garage and never see our neighbors.

2. We wouldn't worry too much about foreign invaders crossing the ocean in hours and getting into our nation. It would take weeks or months for many of those who don't like us to get to us.

3. The middle east would be rendered irrelevant.

I'm sure folks could go on about the benefits of not being dependent upon oil.

And yes, I do know how much it's part of day to day life. But again, that's only been for the past 150 years. We have thousands of years of successful day to day life pre-petroleum so I'm sure we can figure out what to do without crude from the ground.
 
Oil prices an overall production aren't controlled by US corporations. They are controlled by foreign governments, mostly. We make a fraction (at best) of what we consume. The sense of entitlement is strong in America. Evil or not, why should someone halfway around the world care that you can't buy oil for two bucks a gallon anymore? But I don't see it's evil, what reason do they have, morally or otherwise, to sell you oil at a price you prefer? You certainly don't seem interested in paying the price they prefer to receive.

Keep living the highest standard of living in the world, and complain that people in lesser situations don't send you their natural resources at a price you consider fair. Greed? Greed? We use half the world's energy with less than 10% of the population. These greedy governments are only as bad as we are.
 
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The last two posters make excellent points: We could use far less oil by adjusting our lifestyles..... and perhaps not suffer much at all. Of course fuel efficient cars is an easy one, so is walking, planning car trips more carefully, mild hypermiling, etc. I just returned from the store with a backpack full of groceries, a beautiful hour long round trip walking. I rode my bike to work (3.5 miles each way) for over 40 years.

But, next week the Ski Boat comes out and summer waterskiing begins.... Ouch. (Green statement: Its the most efficient possible ski boat that I could assemble)

Some feel the Arabs are greedy, but, my thoughts...

If I was a Saudi citizen, and knew that we were selling our oil cheap...... right now about 9 million barrels a day, for about $100 per barrel..... then learned that if we cut our production in half, world prices would rise to $200 a barrel...

Now, that's the same income while only depleting our reserves half as fast!! Selling 9 million bpd is throwing away our (Saudi) children's future and our only real source of national income.

Greed, or careless, wasteful, irresponsible overproduction, which is it?
 
Originally Posted By: demarpaint
I've been saying it for months now, nothing new. Oils companies are not our friends, as with any business profits come first. At least I took advantage when prices were low, can't beat'en join them. Seeing them rip us off does Piz me off though, as does people defending them.
smile.gif




It's speculators drivng up the price. The regulation was changed in the late 90's allowing greater control by speculators. Wonder if Goldman Sachs & Morgan Stanley had any say in the legislation?

http://climateprogress.org/2011/04/13/goldman-sachs-speculation-oil-price-rise/

Anyhow, most oil execs say the speculation would end if we (the USA) had more domestic production & other sources on line.
 
Originally Posted By: Gearhead
Originally Posted By: demarpaint
I've been saying it for months now, nothing new. Oils companies are not our friends, as with any business profits come first. At least I took advantage when prices were low, can't beat'en join them. Seeing them rip us off does Piz me off though, as does people defending them.
smile.gif




It's speculators drivng up the price. The regulation was changed in the late 90's allowing greater control by speculators. Wonder if Goldman Sachs & Morgan Stanley had any say in the legislation?

http://climateprogress.org/2011/04/13/goldman-sachs-speculation-oil-price-rise/

Anyhow, most oil execs say the speculation would end if we (the USA) had more domestic production & other sources on line.


They had a segment on the news about how speculators are driving the cost of oil up. There is supposed to be a lot of oil around and the speculators are "expecting" problems in the Mid East will cut supply. So in simple terms it is the speculators driving up the cost of oil, and the oil companies are cashing in on record profits as well.

A fix could be anyone trading oil futures would have to hold the contracts for lets say 60-90 days or be assigned a penalty for selling early. That might keep the speculators in check, but it ain't gonna happen. Its a shame because many of the mutual funds have a penalty if you buy a fund and don't hold it for a certain amount of time. The penalty for cashing out of a Mutual Fund early is in some cases 1.5% of the principal, possibly more depending on the company. It keeps the day traders in check, since they don't trade Mutual Funds because of it. I bet the same type of penalty would keep the oil speculators in check too. Then maybe supply and demand would drive prices not speculators. JMO
 
Originally Posted By: javacontour
More people bad at math are going to complain oil companies make too much.

Quote:

The Houston company reported first-quarter earnings of $511 million, or 56 cents per share, compared with $206 million, or 23 cents per share, in the same period last year. Revenue rose 40 percent to $5.28 billion.


That's less than 10% profit margin.

$511million profit/$5.28 Billion revenue = 9.67% profit.

So they earned $0.56/share.

What's a share of Halliburton cost?

About $46.75.

So that's about 1.2% of the value of the company in profits.

Yeah, they are really raping folks.

Get good at math before you complain. Even at the current prices, oil is still a small performer in terms of investment returns. It costs a lot of money to drill 7 miles into the earth to get the oil folks want, and folks begrudge them for making less than 10 cents on every dollar invested.

Get real. Learn to do the analysis and look at all the numbers, not just the huge profit figure.

Without knowing what was invested, it's a meaningless number, that only invokes an emotional, non-thinking response.

I thought BITOG was smarter than that. I guess not.

Good grief. I'll be the Federal Government made more in taxes on that same oil than Halliburton did. Why not complain about how they did nothing, but collect 1/3rd of all profits in corporate taxes?


Don't even start in on the profit margin garbage. Big oil cheerleaders were claiming oil company profit margins were 8-10% back when gas was $2 a gallon. Now that gas prices have doubled, I'm supposed to believe their profit margin hasn't increased? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?
 
Originally Posted By: Tempest
Food prices in general are at or near record highs. And who says food prices aren't volitile?


Food prices are greatly affected by diesel prices...since everything is shipped, hence food prices always go up when diesel prices go up....
 
Originally Posted By: bepperb
Oil prices an overall production aren't controlled by US corporations. They are controlled by foreign governments, mostly. We make a fraction (at best) of what we consume. The sense of entitlement is strong in America. Evil or not, why should someone halfway around the world care that you can't buy oil for two bucks a gallon anymore? But I don't see it's evil, what reason do they have, morally or otherwise, to sell you oil at a price you prefer? You certainly don't seem interested in paying the price they prefer to receive.

Keep living the highest standard of living in the world, and complain that people in lesser situations don't send you their natural resources at a price you consider fair. Greed? Greed? We use half the world's energy with less than 10% of the population. These greedy governments are only as bad as we are.



I bet the world's attitude about us as a country would change if we stopped coming to their rescue every time there's a crisis somewhere in the world. We should either get out this business, or start charging country's for our help...afterall, why should we care about what they want?
 
Originally Posted By: fsskier
The last two posters make excellent points: We could use far less oil by adjusting our lifestyles..... and perhaps not suffer much at all. Of course fuel efficient cars is an easy one, so is walking, planning car trips more carefully, mild hypermiling, etc. I just returned from the store with a backpack full of groceries, a beautiful hour long round trip walking. I rode my bike to work (3.5 miles each way) for over 40 years.

But, next week the Ski Boat comes out and summer waterskiing begins.... Ouch. (Green statement: Its the most efficient possible ski boat that I could assemble)

Some feel the Arabs are greedy, but, my thoughts...

If I was a Saudi citizen, and knew that we were selling our oil cheap...... right now about 9 million barrels a day, for about $100 per barrel..... then learned that if we cut our production in half, world prices would rise to $200 a barrel...

Now, that's the same income while only depleting our reserves half as fast!! Selling 9 million bpd is throwing away our (Saudi) children's future and our only real source of national income.

Greed, or careless, wasteful, irresponsible overproduction, which is it?




$200 per bbl oil is just not sustainable...
 
Originally Posted By: grampi
Originally Posted By: Tempest
Food prices in general are at or near record highs. And who says food prices aren't volitile?


Food prices are greatly affected by diesel prices...since everything is shipped, hence food prices always go up when diesel prices go up....


+1 Higher fuel prices can and will cripple the economy.
 
Quote:
We use half the world's energy with less than 10% of the population.


We have about 5% of the global population and use about 25% the energy. We also generate about 25% of the global wealth.

Productivity on display.
 
I agree with Grampi on the coming to everyone's aid for free.

Why didn't we have the major oil companies right behind us in Iraq? We should have told them "we are going to sell your oil and keep 75% to pay for your emancipation. Then after we're gone you get to keep the infrastructure."
 
I'm glad to see that there are some cooler heads around here that understand the situation and what energy companies actually bring to the table. Most of the BIG OIL companies make gasoline from feedstocks that are not produced by them, which means they have to buy their oil on the market. Refineries make a low profit margin across a large volume of products. It's not like these refineries and oil platforms are pillow factories either. The work is hard and dangerous. People are killed and injured, especially at companies that do not value employee safety. No one seems to get up in arms around how much the gubment takes from our pocket when it comes to gas. The US Government contributes nothing to the production of gasoline but yet they make more money off of the product than the refiners do. To me that just isn't right, but someone a long time ago forgot to stand up a fire the politicians who constantly increase those taxes, so here we are.
 
I thought the idea of gas tax was to pay for the roads so people can drive places and use gas in the first place. Without all the roads no one would be buying much gas. I don't see what bearing gas tax has on the rest of the price of oil and gas. At least we don't pay gas taxes like they do in Canada and Europe.
 
In most - if not all - states the gas tax is used to build and repair roads, bridges and highways. It used to be almost 30 percent of the cost of gas, but fuel tax has not kept pace with inflation, and we are now tapping the general fund, property tax and other sources for our roads.... and the roads and bridges are still deteriorating faster then we are funding repairs.

Fuel prices rise until consumption is reduced to match supply.... a fuel tax increase would mostly come out of the hide of the oil producers, not from the consumer.

Most oil fields are maxed out, the prices increase until we get by on 85 million barrels a day.
 
Originally Posted By: fsskier
Most oil fields are maxed out, the prices increase until we get by on 85 million barrels a day.


That's not true. Most oil fields haven't even been tapped yet, and refineries aren't even close to running at full capacity. Supplies are purposely kept at levels just high enough to meet demand to keep prices at their peak...
 
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