No, Oil companies have the biggest stake in alternative fuels of all. They want to stay in business. When oil is no longer profitable, what are they going to do? Market alternative fuels. Therefore, they do the investing and the researching now, so they can still exist later.

Please cease defending blatant profiteering. Gas prices ought to reflect the oil company's cost as well as the scarcity of gasoline. Therefore, NET PROFIT should remain fairly stable, and yet it has jumped uncomparably high recently.

Yeah, and how long must we pay these increases in taxes? Public trans takes YEARS to build where there isn't any. Southern California is going to take it in the shorts if you raise the gas tax. Some cities can rapidly adopt. I don't see San Diego and Los Angeles rapidly adopting to at least half public transportation.

Your assumption that as price goes up profit goes up is flawed. Generally, as price goes up, so do production costs.

Generally, sure. In the case of oil companies, no.

Where are you getting 100% profit off a gallon of gas? I've been looking all over, and the highest estimate I've seen places their profit at around 18 cents per gallon of gas, while most are putting them at around 14 or 15 cents. Considering that the oil companies are spending more then 10 times that much just to purchase a gallon of crude oil, to say nothing of refining, distribution, and marketing costs, I'm not sure where the 100% profit is coming from.

As oil becomes scarcer, it costs more to extract.

Just think how high their profit margins would be if they could charge the true equilibrium price without fear of getting slapped down by Uncle Sam. Demand for gasoline is highly inelastic, and while I haven't done the analysis, I'd bet that they could charge twice as much per gallon before their margins started to decrease from pricing people out of buying gas.

I don't know where you're getting that silly number of 18 cents. You can't post record profits every year with profits that low.

http://www.wgal.com/news/9336051/detail.html

Not the best source, but I don't feel like googling for an hour for someone to do a decent breakdown. Keep in mind, it's not the gas stations that are making the money. It's the oil companies. The gas stations barely make any money off the gas, it's just a method of getting people into the convenience store.

Yeah, because we all know I would spend an hour googling. Not. More like 90 seconds.

A Primer on Gasoline Prices

I just have to add, as I more thoroughly read the story CM linked to is how ignorant some people are. That story does essentially say that it's all profit for the oil companies. Most people are ignorant enough to just leave it at that as if that means the American oil companies. It is true that the oil producing nations are generally raping everyone and making obscene profits but they are the ones selling the over-priced oil to the good companies that refine and provide fuel to us. You can see that, generally speaking the direct cost of refining the oil and profits accounts for roughly 20% of the cost of a gallon of gas which is generally equal to what the government gets out of it for doing absolutely nothing other than demonize good companies.

Who said anything about American oil companies? I specifically left out any countries in this entire argument for that whole reason.

And also, I suggest you read your sources when you link them. That source essentially says nothing about what kind of profits each company makes.

They were very ambiguous about what "oil company" was. They should have broken down the final cost from the Arabian Supplier, shipping costs, refining costs, ect. They didn't even give us a final number on percent profits.

The point is yeah, they make a lot of money. A lot of people use oil. But so do many other industries, often times with much larger margins. Companies exist to make profit. We do our jobs to make profit. That's how it works. Besides, we really still have very reasonable prices compared to much of the rest of the world.

Seriously, everyone else pays like $8-9-10 a gallon.

STOP YOUR *****ING

Yes you can. Quite easily actually, when people buy hundreds of millions of gallons of gas per day, that 18 cents a gallon starts to add up dramatically. You can easily post record profits every year doing that. And while its now become the in thing to demonize the oil companies because they post record profits every year, it only happens because we consume more and more gasoline every year. Of course they are going to have more profits if we consistently buy more of their product. Thats just common sense. Their profit margin hasn't changed dramatically from what it was in previous years.



Then your paying too much, not my problem.

It's going to be your problem soon there, captain.

(PS, "you're," not "your")

That we can agree on, the question becomes then, what to do about it.

Bend over and take it because it's normal everywhere else?

What a brilliant and utterly useless plan.

I'm sorry your SUV gets crappy mileage.

Get a small bore honda, and stop your *****ing.

The US doesn't have decent public transportation alternatives though, nor will they be easy or quick to implement. We could start by not buying retarded SUVs that get 9MPG just so we can feel like big men.

I drive a crappy '99 Toyota that gets 30+ mpg.

Ah Rob. Our ever faithful Internet Toughguy.

Who's too stupid to realize I drive a car that gets 30 miles to the gallon.

So what are you bitcing about?

OH NO, HIGH GAS PRICES MAKE MY LUXURY GOODS COST MORE!

No ****. Welcome to like everywhere else.

Dude. You're dumb.

Ok I have a 13/gal. tank. I fill up on avg. 11-12 gal. So Current gas is $4/gal (I live in California, remember?). That's a $48 fill up. Now if gas is $3.50 that's a $42 fill up. I fill up about every 10 days (longer if I don't go 90 on freeways). So $48 * 3 = $144 roughly on gas per month. But $42 * 3 = $126/mo. $22 saved on gas by two quarters shaved off the price.

Oh and my car is a 2006 Chevrolet Cobalt, 4-cyl 147 HP. I get ~25 MPH city AND highway combined. If just highway, it's ~28-30.

So mister "suck it up and just pay," I don't know what kind of money you're bringing down, but $144 in gas can be pricy to A LOT of people.

People everywhere else pay DOUBLE THAN YOU.

They do pretty alright.

What's your occupation that requires traveling that much per week?

They also have to drive about half the distance to get anywhere. And they drive cars that rival lawnmowers in horsepower.

HEY BUTTMUNCH

I have like 6 horsepower! Thats only available on PREMIUM lawnmowers.

Software Engineer. My workplace is in San Diego. This is my sojourn 5/7 days of the week.

He's not whining. You're just goading him and being obnoxious. If you had noticed, his first post in this thread was supporting the idea that gas prices aren't so bad when taken in perspective. Now you're just flipping out like a berserk ADHD eight year old with an internet connection.

Well, there's the problem right there!



You're in software engineering.

If you'll notice, I don't care captain.

Jesus gris thats one hell of a commute. I take it San Diego drivers suck too.

Dude I had a similar commute during the summer. Ugh. 7-8AM freeways SUCK. And are extreme health hazards when you're still drowsy.

I think Rob has a fair point, no matter if he shouts it. The rest of the developed world is coping with much higher fuel prices and saying "oh I have to travel further to work" doesn't cut it.

If you end up living a lifestyle beyond your means then you'll have to adjust and make changes. I still think my comments about urban sprawl stand. But adjustments to your transportation use and technology could improve to meet those prices too. Americans could car-pool more and use smaller cars to start. Just as an example the Toyota Prius, the most fuel efficient vehicle available in the US gets 46MPG[sub]US[/sub], the British model by virtue of weighing less and presenting a smaller obstruction to airflow, gets 55MPG[sub]US[/sub].

Either way, prices will inevitably go up as the easily accessible oil dries up and all the whining about taxes or energy company profits won't change that. It's the economy and it's going to force you to make changes.

I totally don't believe that Prius statistic. My grandpa had an old (we're talking 80's) civic that got 50+ MPG.

Dude, for somebody who is into video games, you really suck at abstract thinking. Your link first talked about finances related to extracting, selling, and profiting from crude oil. Generally speaking that is going to be a foreign country such as Mexico, Venezuela, Canada, or a middle eastern country although the US does, of course, engage in that portion of the industry as well. As already stated, your link is very ambiguous on the matter as if the "oil company" is the same entity from start to finish.

You are correct that my link doesn't specifically refer to American oil companies,[begin insert] their profits, nor how much other companies make. It has one catagory for crude oil cost, which will include that portion of the industries' profits, and it includes refining and distribution costs so it essentially covers the whole process. What I found most interesting was that the portion of the cost for taxes was nearly equal to refining and profit combined [/end insert]. However, since it is a publication by the United States government referring to what percentage of the price of gasoline goes for what have you, you can infer that a) it is a reflection of cost paid by the American consumer and b) at the very least it refers to prices dealing with companies that operate in America. Of course there are foreign companies distributing and selling fuel here such as BP and Citgo and you can criticize me if you want by over-simplifying and just saying American oil companies.

At least you didn't post some tinfoil hat nonsense that my citation was based on information from the US government and, therefore, suspect.

edit - some editing above in the third paragraph.

Are you referring to my comment about the Prius? I just skimmed back over the thread to see if I missed somebody else's post about it but I didn't see anything.

If you are referring to my comment about how devestating the Prius is, it is because of the strip mining necessary to produce the nickel for the batteries that is going on in Canada and then the impact of shipping the material on huge, poluting cargo ships all the way to China for refinement. So while the end footprint of the Prius is small, when you include what happens just to produce the car, the end result is a vehicle that rivals a Hummer in environmental impact. Or so I've read.

There's no such thing as a 'foreign' oil company in America. The oil is refined here, it's sold here, the companies pay taxes here. BP might be based in England, but it pays taxes here and employs people here.