Originally Posted By: grampi
It just blows my mind that so many of you either believe the oil industry is this squeaky clean enterprise that never does anything crooked and/or you know they're crooked and you just don't care. I guess I should stop caring too...
Originally Posted By: turtlevette
To say "they make too much money" down plays and ignores the unethical and criminal element in the industry. Remember that curly headed CEO of BP complaining that he had to give up time on his yaht because of the accident. A sociopath. Running a major corporation.
If there is no national security concern, why does the government store hundreds of millions of barrels of the stuff in empty Louisiana salt mines?
Oil companies are not doing charity works, they are in business to make some profit for their share holders. They aren't squeaky clean enterprises but they didn't violate any law of the country and of any state. They didn't intentionally manipulate the supply & demand to raise oil and/or gasoline price to make extra profit, at least that was the conclusions of all investigations they had to endure the last 15-20 years.
One of the reasons that we are paying fair price for gasoline at the pump is competition, there are more than few bands consumers can choose from.
If you look at natural gas, power, water ... companies you will see that most locations don't have any choice, only 1 company to provide power, water ... Whatever they want to charge they have it, most customers don't have any choice.
One example: we have shortage of water in So Cal, we cut back water usage to minimum (about 25-30 gallons per person per day, compares with average of around 100-150 gallon ), but our water bill is keep going up. The water company claimed that the revenue was lower because we conserved more than we should, so they raise price to keep the same profit.
Same for cable TV, cable company monopolizes 1 city/town and you will never get any reasonable price of their services, but if there is a second provider their price will drop within days.
It just blows my mind that so many of you either believe the oil industry is this squeaky clean enterprise that never does anything crooked and/or you know they're crooked and you just don't care. I guess I should stop caring too...
Originally Posted By: turtlevette
To say "they make too much money" down plays and ignores the unethical and criminal element in the industry. Remember that curly headed CEO of BP complaining that he had to give up time on his yaht because of the accident. A sociopath. Running a major corporation.
If there is no national security concern, why does the government store hundreds of millions of barrels of the stuff in empty Louisiana salt mines?
Oil companies are not doing charity works, they are in business to make some profit for their share holders. They aren't squeaky clean enterprises but they didn't violate any law of the country and of any state. They didn't intentionally manipulate the supply & demand to raise oil and/or gasoline price to make extra profit, at least that was the conclusions of all investigations they had to endure the last 15-20 years.
One of the reasons that we are paying fair price for gasoline at the pump is competition, there are more than few bands consumers can choose from.
If you look at natural gas, power, water ... companies you will see that most locations don't have any choice, only 1 company to provide power, water ... Whatever they want to charge they have it, most customers don't have any choice.
One example: we have shortage of water in So Cal, we cut back water usage to minimum (about 25-30 gallons per person per day, compares with average of around 100-150 gallon ), but our water bill is keep going up. The water company claimed that the revenue was lower because we conserved more than we should, so they raise price to keep the same profit.
Same for cable TV, cable company monopolizes 1 city/town and you will never get any reasonable price of their services, but if there is a second provider their price will drop within days.
