ExxonMobil profits 69% higher than one year ago

[wtmusic]

No, it's not global market instability, it's not dwindling reserves, it's that these pigs weren't already rich enough:

"It is no secret that consumers are suffering from very high gasoline prices. And as a result of these high prices, ExxonMobil just reported a first-quarter profit of $10.7 billion — 69 percent higher than a year ago. The national level of disgust and anger is approaching record levels as we watch the loss of our hard-earned dollars become Big Oil’s gain. The question is, what are we going to do about it?

Before discussing how to deal with this, we should first discuss what it is that we are actually trying to do. I believe the very simplistic view is that by going after the oil companies, they are going to relent and lower gas prices. Thus, their profits will return to normal levels along with our gas prices. We want a return to the good old days of sub-$2/gallon gasoline. But most of the proposals that are being floated won’t do anything to relieve high gas prices, although they may have an impact on oil company profits. If that’s the case, then what is the point? I would say that it is simply feeling like justice was served. We want to get even with Big Oil."

http://theenergycollective.com/robertrapier/56747/getting-even-exxonmobil?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=The+Energy+Collective+%28all+posts%29


Desperately searching for somewhere to hide $10.7 billion in profits, Exxon found a place: under their CEO's chin.

[KeepItReal]

1. ExxonMobil executives are doing the Charleston right now

Commodities markets and the weak dollar pump up the value of a barrel of oil, and Exxon gets paid for every barrel they supply.

[karnac]

2. We should tax away everything above 12 percent net profit.

That'll teach 'em!

I make about 30% net, but then again i am a small business.

[phantom power]

3. "under their CEO's chin"

:spray:

[One Voice]

4. $4.29 Gal. today

in Indiana.

:mad:

[thaddeus_flowe]

9. Arm and a leg,

in California.

[progressoid]

5. FREEMARKET!! USA!1 ETC.!!!

[girl gone mad]

6. "Thank god it passed"

:eyes:

[defendandprotect]

7. How absolutely disgusting -- break up this monopoly -- end subsidies --

and NATIONALIZE oil industry -- !!

[defendandprotect]

8. We're strengthening our corporate fascists and their control over us every day

we don't NATIONALIZE oil industry!!

[karnac]

10. so how much is earned by exxon per gallon? 10 cents?

they say under a dime. taxes are about 50 cents in california.
http://www.exxonmobilperspectives.com/2011/04/27/gas-prices-and-industry-earnings-a-few-things-to-think-about/
is this true?

[wtmusic]

11. Too much.

The math is not complicated - Exxon's profits are through the roof and their gas is expensive. Since Exxon is selling a non-competitive product (all gas is pretty much the same) another vendor could lower their profit margin and sell twice as much as Exxon.

Ergo, American consumers are hostage to price gouging and collusion by oil companies.

[karnac]

12. how much is too much?

should it be free?

say a dime per gallon? 20 cents? a dollar?

[wtmusic]

13. That amount sets itself in a truly free market.

If there is collusion and price fixing it doesn't.

Why are ExxonMobil's profits up 68% since last year? Are they providing 68% better gasoline? Better service? Are the oil companies having to pay proportionately more for oil on the open market (of course not, otherwise they wouldn't be enjoying higher profits)? Are other companies seeing similar profit gains (likely, yes)?

Answer: the oil companies' profits are up 68% because they can be, and there isn't shit the American consumer can do about it.

[karnac]

14. it goes up because 2 reasons

they claim they only make about 8 percent profit. that's about right. pretty much all oil companies make around 10 percent.

10 percent sounds fair to me. I net 30 percent. about 40k with expenses around 85k so am *I* a criminal?
.
taxes on gasoline is 50 cents a gallon. is that criminal?

safeway and most grocery chains make between 2-5 percent. are they just plain stupid or what? no wonder they don't like putting themselves in high shoplifting environments.

they make money because of two reasons.

10 percent of 2 dollar gas is 20 cents. 10 percent of 4 dollar gas is 40 cents. thats WHY they make money.

and if they can't sell to us, they sell overseas for even more. to economies actually growing and need it.. they claim they ony make 2-4 cents per gallon here in the usa. why they bother with us, i don't know.

http://www.dailymarkets.com/economy/2011/04/27/gasoline-taxes-vs-exxon-profit-per-gallon/

when i was in spain 2 years ago, a liter was over 6 euro a gallon! because of government policy and taxing mostly. but they also paid more for crude!! who knows what it is now.


so tell ME how my numbers are wrong.

[wtmusic]

15. If they still make 8 percent profit, how did the price of gas go up

28% in the last year, while the price of crude went up only about 10%?

http://www.mongabay.com/images/commodities/charts/crude_oil.html

That's simplistic, of course. They could have improved their production efficiency by 18% in one year (ha). Or they might have gotten 18% more in tax breaks.

Something ain't adding up.

[karnac]

16. actually efficiency should be lower.

we have not built a refinery in the USA in 30 years. and we still have not recovered capacity since katrina. old refineries mean more cost. more pollution too.
As a good analogy, old car vs new car. At some point, it costs more to maintain the old one than to get a new one. and keep it running at full capacity. if fact, we have only 25 percent of the refineries we used to have. and YOU pay more .


The other issue is the availability of "sweet" versus "sulphuric" crude. The stuff from alaska is nasty and hard to refine. the stuff from the middle east and offshore is "sweet" but costs much to transport or get out of the ground.

also, much of the oil we DO get from the LAND is from near depleted oil wells. we have to do extraordinary stuff. like pipe water and steam into get the last bit it out. more cost.

What this means there IS a correlation with crude price rise/fall but not the only thing.

I don't have a direct figures but i can see what pretty much all the companies do.

sell at cost plus 10 percent. if cost and price doubles, profits double too. add on another 15-20 percent(which can double) for local/state/fed government. if a state is hurting financially, they will tax more.

as far as tax subsidies, i agree take them away. but it wont make more than a difference of a few pennies per gallon. might actually be better for the company. tax subsidies(or any financial break by a government) gives the state a greater right to interfere in operations.

[wtmusic]

17. Sorry, I just can't seem to shed a tear for ExxonMobil.

You can try to explain away high gas prices by sulphuric crude and Katrina, but the bottom line is this: they are making record profits while prices at the pump approach an all-time high.

That means consumers are not only footing the bill for all of the awful taxation and aging refinery issues, but lining their pockets pretty well to boot.

The fact that no company is attempting to gain a competitive advantage by lowering their price also means there's collusion.

It's not that complicated.

[karnac]

18. cry or not, 10 percent profit is still fair.

If there was no profit, why do it? Just buy some treasury bonds and sit on your ass. I wouldn't work for free.


I would have to agree, there has to be some sort of collusion. probably unwritten. And planned. Small oil companies wind up not surviving and get bought out by larger ones. YOU lower your price too far, and you just don't survive. Just like the airlines.

As for refineries, oil companies decided long ago there was no point in trying to meet regulatory issues building new refineries in this country. it was more profitable letting costs rise and charge accordingly.


So how do you lower the gas price. No easy answer.

Al i am saying is "sticking it to the man" solves nothing. You either will pay more for the privilege, or the "man" simply goes away and ply his trade elsewhere.

And your gas still goes up as supplies dwindle.

Here is an interesting tidbit which i just found. about "independent" refiners" their costs have risen dramatically in recent years. Some are losing massive amounts of money. that apparently accounts for your 28 % rise in gas with only a 10 percent rise in crude. You want to stick it to them too?

http://www.kiplinger.com/columns/picks/archive/2008/pick0509.htm

Now HERE is a refiner that learned how to maintain a profit....

http://seekingalpha.com/article/255423-marathon-oil-profit-from-high-crack-spread-and-soaring-crude-prices

[wtmusic]

19. Fair is what the market says, not what you say.

Your first article is from 2008, and the current rise in price of crude, as I've pointed out, is about 1/3 of last year's rise in the price of gasoline - so regardless about what they say about the "soaring price of crude", the price of gasoline is "soaring" about 3x higher.

And those poor refiners? Take a look at how their stock has done over the last two years:

http://www.kiplinger.com/qm.html?qm_page=25760&qm_symbol=FTO
http://www.kiplinger.com/qm.html?action=showMarkets&qm_symbol=VLO
http://www.kiplinger.com/qm.html?action=showMarkets&qm_symbol=TSO
http://www.kiplinger.com/qm.html?action=showMarkets&qm_symbol=ALJ
http://www.kiplinger.com/qm.html?action=showMarkets&qm_symbol=WNR

Everyone of them going through the roof. My heart is fucking bleeding. :cry:

There's a remarkably easy answer: enforce the Sherman Act. As was done exactly 100 years ago against Standard Oil of New Jersey. Apparently Big Oil has forgotten that that kind of bullshit is illegal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil_Co._of_New_Jersey_v._United_States

[GliderGuider]

20. I like Rapier's recommendations about what to do about it

I also agree with his comment that the proposals being floated are less about energy policy and more about revenge. I would add that the lust for revenge is being driven mostly by frustration - our growing realization that we can't anything about our need for fuel unless we accept the need for change in our lives, and our resentment over the fact that the companies have us over an oil-barrel. From the same article:

The proposals that are currently being floated for singling out the U.S. oil industry for punishment as a result of their profits simply feed on the public’s anger at these companies. They don’t represent good energy policy; indeed they aren’t about energy policy at all. They are about revenge. We want to stick it to ExxonMobil — even though the proposals would if anything increase the price you pay at the pump and ensure that more of our oil comes from overseas.

But there is a way that every individual can stop feeding ExxonMobil’s enormous profits. Stop buying their product. The reason they are so profitable is simply that the public keeps buying their product even as the price has doubled over the past few years. I understand that we are all dependent to one extent or another on oil, but most people use more of that product than we need to. Because of changes I have made in my own life, even though Big Oil is making record profits, they are profiting less from me than they were a decade ago. That is because of personal choices I made that you can make too. You can become more fuel efficient. You can use your car for fewer trips. You can carpool and use public transportation. Those things will have a real impact in reducing your contribution to Big Oil’s profits.

But that would require that we make some actual changes, and our collective laziness is too great for that. We want to keep consuming as we always have, while sticking it to the companies that make that consumption possible. But if you won’t make any changes in your life, then you can expect to continue transferring an ever increasing portion of your budget to Big Oil’s coffers. We might be able to drive the domestic oil companies out of business — which by the way support an estimated 9.2 million jobs — but you are still going to pay more (to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela) unless you use less. Of course your other option is to buy ExxonMobil stock. If you can’t help but feed your money to the beast, you could at least invest in them and get some of that money back as their stock value appreciates.

It all comes down to the price elasticity of demand- if we were a little more elastic with out consumption in response to price rises, we wouldn't be feeling nearly as negative about the situation.

[wtmusic]

21. As usual, those who are least able to afford it don't have much of a choice.

All well and good for those who take day trips in the country; those who need gas to get to work are stuck.

Those who can afford hybrids or electrics save; those with the 20-year-old Buick on its 2nd set of rings lose.

[GliderGuider]

22. The citizens one of the richest countries on the planet complain about $4 gas...

The US has 4 times the GDP per capita of the world as a whole.

Europeans pay $8.40/gallon right now (1.5 Eur per liter). Canadians pay $5.50/gallon ($1.40 CAD/liter). That means that the average Canadian pays 10.6% of their income for fuel, the average Frenchman pays 18.5% of theirs, and the average American will pay only 6.4% of their income for fuel at $4/gallon.

Looked at another way, after paying for fuel the average Frenchman will have $28,000 a year left over, the average Canuck will have $35,000 and the average Yank will be left with $44,000.

It's tres chic to get your hate on for Exxon, but if their entire $10.7 billion profit were turned back into lowering the cost of American fuel, it would bring it down by less than 4 cents a gallon. You spend damn close to a trillion dollars a year on oil.

Hate Exxon all you want, but don't try to throw up smokescreens based on their profit numbers and the poverty of Americans. It's an innumerate and self-centered argument.

[wtmusic]

23. You're one to complain about innumeracy.

First, you're comparing expecting Exxon's profits to cover all American gasoline.

Second, there seems to be an assumption that Americans and Europeans/Canadians are equally dependent on oil.

Third, picking an average figure as an indicator of a country's wealth is specious (10% of Americans own 71% of its wealth - tell the 30 million Americans without jobs how wealthy they are).

And finally, the whole comparison is essentially irrelevant - profits have uncoupled from the price of crude suggesting that all oil companies are engaged in an anti-competitive trust of some sort. I'm fairly certain that the French and Canadians are getting reamed as badly or worse than we are. So what.

I know, I'm an ungrateful, rich bastard who should be sending ExxonMobil chocolates for taking my money so much more quickly than they did last year.