what total BS!
what's sad is a LOT of folks out there actually believe that BIG oil is not making much profits ... they are the most profitable companies on the face of the earth!
forget those low net % profit numbers ... those can be manipulated by any HUGE corporation with unlimited resources paying for teams of tax accountants. example: record cash from raising prices from about $1.50gal to $4gal with little change in costs would result in HUGE tax liabilities. solution is to spend that $$$ on assets, increasing cost of doing business, neatly hiding profits. this tactic resulted in further consolidation of petroleum industry in America. resulting in more control in fewer hands.
we've gone from hundreds of owners of refineries to a tiny handful of owners in American in a mass effort to shield the MASSIVE amounts of cash generated by sky rocketing fuel costs. same for buying out almost all of the small independent oil companies in America. BIG oil had to do buy assets on a HUGE scale or face paying taxes on those equally HUGE profits.
look at gross receipts size of small countries GNP, $$$ Trillion dollars ... BIG oil has been making record profits on order of 25x+ higher than before Katrina.
Yep, you morons fell for it. .50 a gallon bought your vote. Now Obama is using gun control to secretly jack gas prices back up.
Problem started with Bill Clinton. Before him, gas was under a dollar.
1. Bill Clinton is elected and gas prices go over $1
2. Bush2 is elected, tried to fix Clintonsproblems
3. Obama elected, gas goes over$3.
Problem started with Bill Clinton. Before him, gas was under a dollar.
1. Bill Clinton is elected and gas prices go over $1
2. Bush2 is elected, tried to fix Clintonsproblems
3. Obama elected, gas goes over$3.
Tinfoil aside, Big oil companies aren't even close to some tech companies in profits. Taking the comparison to Apple for instance, Conoco pulled in nearly a third of the revenue Apple in..... of that third.... they were about half as profitable. That's a significant difference profitability.
So, what you're saying is, big oil need to find a way to pull the oil from the ground and refine it into fuel using child labor from china? Because that's how the tech companies post such huge profits.
People seem to forget, oil produces a lot more products than gasoline, and those products generate revenue as well. I wouldn't be as irritated if the refiners weren't exporting millions of gallons of fuel a year to other countries.
All of ours that are electrified are on POC pump off controllers. They have a weight indicator located just under the horse's head and when fluid comes in they will kick on and pump until fluid is gone. Sure beats them running all the time and burning up the stuffing box rubbers. There is an old man that owns the land where one of our wells sits and he is all the time griping about his well not running. This well only runs about 2 hours a day so by the time he drinks his coffee and gets around to coming out it has already shut down.
However, the fuel blend is different. The base fuel is the same, but branded stations (conoco, texaco, shell, etc) all use the same base fuel and then the tanker is filled with the base and the specific additives and detergents for each brand are added. Here is an interesting tip- non-branded stations sell on;y the base fuel, no detergents or additives. If you only use the non-branded base fuel, the levels of carbon and varnish that will stain the inside of your engine is pretty interesting. If you take an engine apart that has been fed branded fuel and a similar engine with the same miles on it that has only been fed non-branded base fuel, the branded fuel engine is always much cleaner. A cleaner engine lasts longer and runs better.
Also, you would be really surprised to find out the variance in octane ratings at the pump. A lot of times a gas station will have the tanker pump low-octane into the premium pumps. The stores can get into big trouble for this, but the "foriegn owned" stores don't really care and they are the worst offenders.
That is some change I could believe in.
