All hail the Syth and the Empire!

Wow. I would understand that revenue should be at a record high and I would even understand if profits had increased incrementaly at just a few percent over profits from previous quarters but this is just insane.

Talk about getting the shaft… This crap has got to stop

I work in the wrong industry.

GOD BLESS AMERICA

He should spend some of his profit on getting rid of his double chin :-\

Will someone get that man a sandwich!?

j i m

they tell the farmer how much he can sell a gallon of milk for but the government wont tell big oil how much to sell a gallon of fuel for…the next president could win office simply by promising to put a price regulation on big oil. i know i would vote for him/her regardless of party.

What is wrong with public companies that are part of public markets making a profit (it’s their CEO’s fiscal responsibility to best maximum their profits for the good of his shareholders)?

For those naysayers, look at their stock price as noted above. It is at an all-time high and those that don’t like paying $3 a gallon for gas could buy exxon-mobil stock and hedge their bets that way. Over the past 52 wks, it’s up +10% which is about where we are in gas prices from 52 wks ago. People buy stocks of consumer products companies that have inelastic demand all the time.

I realize that gasoline and petroleum-based products have some inelastic demand (people need to drive to work) but cars that are inefficient are not required and thus other transportation options exist for any consumer.

Also note that it takes a lot more money to make a gallon of gasoline than a gallon of bottled water and people have no problem paying $2.50 for a liter of water which is ~1/4 of a gallon… at that rate, we’re paying $10 a gallon for bottled water, well more than that for milk and plenty more than that for orange juice. I don’t see anyone going after the profiteering / gouging dairy farmers of Wisconsin or orange growers of Florida.

How exactly does the US have any power over prices on Oil?

It is not like we can choose not to buy it.

Capitalism and the free market exemplified.

ss (#8) – That would be nice, if we made our own oil here like we do with milk. Oil & milk have two completely different economic dynamics, and there’s a lot more involved with regulating prices than just what the end-user consumer will pay at the grocery or the pump. Economics is a layered proposition, and choosing to over simplify it doesn’t change the reality in which it operates.

Further, while I don’t expect the American people to be experts in economics, I would think it reasonable that they at least be a little smarter than insult their own intelligence by becoming single-issue voters. Clearly, even that’s too much to expect, so I won’t hold my breath. If you’d vote for the President of the United States just for telling you what you want to hear, please stay home and don’t impose your monumental stupidity on the rest of us.

hopefully he just dies of the diabetes

http://money.cnn.com/2006/07/27/news/companies/exxon/index.htm?cnn=yes

This article on CNN talks about Exxon. It says that they make $1318 A FREAKING SECOND!!!! You know Exxon, you could maybe cut your income down to around $500 a second and maybe help some of us poor workers out.

They keep saying it costs more to get oil so we charge more. Well, it’s been said before and I’m going to say it again, if the price was in line with the production costs, you wouldn’t be making record profit.

Oh well, it’s the american dream. As #11 said: “Capitalism and the free market exemplified.” In this system, the big companies are supposed to overcome greed and “out of the good of their own hearts”, not charge too much for stuff we all need. Well, that would work if these people had hearts and could get past greed (and not just CEOs, but boards and shareholders). Oh well, I guess we just have to keep taking it. I’d ask for some vaseline when I have to bend over, but they make that out of oil as well and would probably charge an arm and a leg for it too.

I hope he dies a slow and painful death…

DAVID 9
What’s wrong with a public company making proffits,nothing unless of course your making the largest proffits in the history of civilization,and your products raw materiels get to market,by the tax payers to keep your pipiline stable and product flowing through.not mention the sacrifice of our soldiers there family and loved ones. and you want a news flash dave some of them have been crippled and mamed others even killed. exxon deserves a proffit but this is out of line and harming our country.

David, post 9., you my friend are a tool. No one needs to buy fourteen gallons of orange juice or bottled water a week. That’s the difference. Gasoline is not a luxury item. No company should be allowed to maximize profits if their product is bought out of necessity rather than desire. You make it sound like Exxon Mobil somehow DESERVES that $10.36 billion? They raise the price at the pump, and the extra cash goes right into their pockets. There’s a little thing called gluttony.

I’m gonna pull a Tommy Corn and start riding my bike everywhere and call people murderers for using petroleum…..all so that my money doesn’t go to some goblin of man.

These bastards shouldn’t exist at all. Expect more wars? They have to spend money somewhere…

10 billion in a QUARTER? Yikes. No wonder he’s laughing. The joke’s on us.

higher price per barrel my ass

Anybody critizing Exxon is unpatriotic. America has provided them the opportunity to suceed and participate in a free and open market. Exxon is living the American dream. If you don’t like it, go back to Russia.

“Gasoline is not a luxury item”

Actually, in many situations it is. How is not a luxury item when I take my big block powered ski boat out for the weekend, or when I commute to work all alone in my full size SUV?

Many readers here at LLN have expressed the attitude that if they can afford the gas, it’s well within their right to use as much as they want. Sounds like a luxury item to me…

Supply and demand – When we use less gas their will be less demand, supply will go up and prices will go down.

ooodaddy, when you graduate elementary school, I suggest you take high school economics and learn about the principal of supply and demand. Ahk-Med is right.

Exxon is not living the American dream. Exxon is not living. Exxon is not a person. We need to quit treating giant corporations like people. The people that run them are sacrificing our sons and daughters at the altar of the Corporation and it should stop. Most energy is regulated to some degree, and this situation has to have oversight. Nevermind the human casualties, how about the small business that depends on gasoline for their livelyhood. Don’t forget the municipal services that are cutting back fire and police services and patrols just to stay in budget. This is only good for that fat, grinning, evil slob and couple of his fat, fat friends. Whoever says that I am unpatriotic for looking out for ALL Americans needs to quit looking at the inside of his ass all day.

oh…and higher prices on the raw product does not neccesarily equal PROFITS!

and we are supposed to believe that exxon mobil isn’t manipulating oil prices up and there is no collusion and price fixing. thats a load of B.S., thats just like we are supposed to believe that our crooked president isn’t getting a cut of the cureent oil profits as well. when his daddy was in power we had the highest oil prices in 15 years and now his worthless son is in power and we have the highest oil prices EVER recorded and this is just a coincidence ? I DONT THINK SO. and neither would anybody else with a brain..

Dentists must charge a fooorrchin down there in ol’ Houston, cuz this jerk can’t afford one with his million$….

JMa
obviously high school is as far as you went,typical of you right wing conservatives to have simple high school answers to complex problems,

10 dollars a LTR is around the corner

actually I have a masters degree in IT and as far as being right wing, I am just bright enough to know when Im getting screwed. #32 you obviously aren’t so do you refer to the third grade as “you’re senior year” it would certainly seem so..

Ahk-Med, by your logic food is also a luxury item because there are people who can afford a $50 steak dinner every evening. The majority of LLN readers probably can’t grasp the notion that putting $40 into your car every week is a big deal for a lot of people. Call me crazy, but even ONE billion a quarter would be excessively profitable. A return to $2 a gallon would make a big difference in a lot of people’s lives. I’m not entirely sure what Exxon will do with 10 billion that they couldn’t do with one. Suck the Earth dry of its remaining natural resources? Super.

It’s obvious the price-gouging that’s been taking place the last couple years is directly profiting oil companies in a very big way; why isn’t that reason enough to take action? Because putting $40-$80 in your truck every week isn’t a big deal for the people with the power to do something about it?

Which amendment was it that guranteed our right to cheap gas? I can’t find it my copy of the Constitution or Bill of Rights.

“your products raw materiels get to market,by the tax payers to keep your pipiline stable and product flowing through.not mention the sacrifice of our soldiers there family and loved ones. and you want a news flash dave some of them have been crippled and mamed others even kille”

Not singling out any particular event (Iraq fiasco), how much do you think our gas would cost right now if we as American’s didn’t make these sacrafices? Do you think it would cost less or more?

“we have the highest oil prices EVER recorded”

Not when you adjust for inflation. You must be young or just forgot the late 70’s / early 80’s. Yes, both Bushes have seen spikes in oil prices when they are/were in office, but geo-political events are clearly the cause for those spikes. You know, war and instability in the middle east. You can make a case that W caused our current problem, but Sr. didn’t invade Kuwait in the early 90’s. You could make a compelling case for your observations, but your rant makes you come across like you wear a tin foil hat.

If you don’t like fat oil companies, don’t buy products with oil in them or products that use oil. If you don’t buy there products, they won’t make money (back to the principal of supply and demand). If high gas/oil prices are hurting you, adapt. Move closer to where you work, walk instead of drive, use public transit, turn off the lights, car pool… Welcome to the real word, adapt or die.

For all of you exxon supporters at what point will the price of gas cause you to cringe? Especially when the benefits of capitalism are rising well over the acutal demand.

I want oil prices to keep on climbing. The higher they go, the more the outcry for alternative fuel sources, which means that we can use hydrogen-powered engines sooner rather than later, which will in turn leave the Middle East without anything to sell and will curb the spread of terrorism by drying up the constant movement of money to the Middle East via the sale of crude oil.

The Arab countries only have 2 resources in great quantity: oil and sand. And how much do you want to bet that they aren’t selling large quantities of sand? If you cut off the oil supply, you cut off the flow of terrorism by limiting their funding.

Jon.

Ahk-MEd also read #35 comment… and as far as ranting goes I think that is what a bunch of our founding fathers were doing just before they got sick of getting screwed by the british wich STARTED the US in the first place. Some ranting denotes a passion for or against something not un intelligance. and as far as the US goes etc.. how the hell would you know anyway ? AHK-MED….

Check your 401k everyone – it’s very possible that you own shares in Exxon or some other evil profiteering energy company. Does that make you part of the problem?

You can always expect the “free market” tripe to be posted here whenever gas prices are the topic. And its always as inane as the previous time. First of all, the energy industry is anything but a free market. It’s utterly laughable how much intrusion into this industry our federal gov’t currently has, but unfortunately its mostly in the form of 100’s of millions of dollars of relief for future reserves exploration and tax breaks. Yup – your government gives big oil 100s of millions of dollars for them to look for more oil, natural gas, etc…

Far more important though is the sacrifice of thousands of lives and billions of dollars by our military to support actions in areas (middle east, central america, etc) that we would have NO interest in if oil/energy weren’t in those areas. People are dying every day so that we can have “cheap” energy.

Free market? Please…. put down the Wall Street Journal and educate yourself to reality.

Nobody is forcing anybody to buy gas. Everybody makes lifestyle choices. If you opted to live somewhere that you need to drive 10 minutes to buy a quart of milk, thats your fault, not Exxon’s.

To all of you complaining about big oil, what steps in your personal live have you taken to be less reliant on it. If you have done nothing or very little, than you have nobody to blame for your dependancy other than yourself.

…and all of you contributed.

This guy probably owns a fleet of Escalades and Tahoes. If I were him, I’d own a fleet of Hummers because I could have all the gas in the world to fuel them.

Can someone explain to me how the price per barrel going up gets you record profits. If I sell rocks and the price of rocks double, I would be expected to pass that on to my customer. Say I paid 30 cents a rock cost and charged a dollar. If I suddenly had to pay 60 cents it seems like I could still make the same profit by charging $1.30. Would I charge $2.30 if I knew it hurt almost every other person and enterprise just to give myself another dollar. And if I did, what’s wrong with me? How can they justify this? It isn’t supply and demand, the article says they have the supply to meet demand. What else could it be except they are ****bags?

ooodaddy, good counter argument, how stupid of me for not seeing it your way.

This guy should treat himself to a couple of new Hummers for all his good work

JMa – your arguments have some validity, but generally ignore reality. The US has become so completely car-centric it is difficult if not impossible for most people to live independant of cars. I live 6 miles from work and would ride my bike if the roads were anything but a two-lane no-shoulder death trap for bicyclists (or pedestrians). There are no residential areas close to my current work (or previous work for that matter), so abandoning a car is not an option for me unless I want to pursue another career.

And this gets to the point – the government should intrude on our lives as little as they possibly can. However, there are some areas they MUST intrude on to make existance possible. Things that people NEED in their life are not subject to the same “free market” rules as things people WANT (which should be ruled by the “free market”). The b-schoolers here can try to dispute that, but the fact is that our gov’t has already acknowledged that energy is NOT something that can be left to “free market” forces and that they must intrude. If it were truly safe to let energy be ruled by “free market”, we would NOT be involved constantly in middle east fighting, and energy subsidies would not be given out to big oil/energy.

you know as much as everyone is complaining (and shocked) about exxon’s profits, i know that in a couple days everyone will forget this ever happened and we’ll all go back to our track days and autoxing, or little trips to the mountains, burnouts, and red light sprints. out of all these comments only one had a marxist view and i will bet thats the only view that is correct. no one REALLY gives a ****…this is the second record breaking profit, the first was made by Exxon too and what happened since that time? NOTHING.

Chris, I agree, with you in that you can lobby your government to do anything. Government is in oil’s back pocket, and so realisticly, nothing is going to change in terms oil prices.

You could however lobby your local government to boost funding for public transit, sidewalks, bike lanes, and give people good cheap alternatives to their car. You could also ask your government to spend a little time doing a little city planning in order to build proper infrastructure to ensure that people don’t need 2-3 cars per family.

JMa – you’re exactly right about lobbying the locals, but its depressing when you try to see how few others care. I’m out of here for the day, but thanks for the reasoned discusion!

So it looks like we need alternative fuels…but that doesn’t look like it wiil happen soon. There are hybrids out there, but not everybody has the money to go get a new vehicle. I would be more than happy to walk to college or walmart but that aint happening. It seems like to me that if gas prices were lowered Cartman would make even more money, more people would be willing to travel more or drive their trucks and suvs again…more gas purchases = more profit…

Number 50 mth had it righ so lets exspand on that

. Lets say I own a widget factory. Lets call it British Widgets to keep it simple.

My widget factory has several expenses like labor, energy, steel etc. The largest expense by far is however the steel I use to make the widgets. It costs me a dollar to make each widget and the steel costs me 50 cents. I charge two dollars each for my widgets cause I am a greety bastard. =)

So the cost of my steel starts going up to 60 cents per widget then 70 cents. My first thought since I am a greedy bastard is to raise the price of my widgets by the same amount but I do not want to piss off my customers so I just absorb that extra 20 cents per widget. I do this for the first few weeks and then I have to raise my prices because my steel costs have gone up to 80 cents per widget. I raise my prices to match selling my widgets for $2.80. The demand for widgets is strong though and steel prices keep going up so to keep pace I have to raise my prices to $3.00. My revenue is going up steadily but my profits are staying the same at about a dollar per widget. Now I might bump my price a little to capture a small amount of extra profit but it is going to be marginal profit. Instead of a dollar profit per widget I might try to capture a $1.10 or $1.15.

That is how I would expect things at the oil company to work. Obviously they are going to have to raise prices and they will probably have to raise retail prices slightly more percentage wise then wholesale prices in order to cover extra expenses.

I just ordered a Honda Fit after seeing this article this morning, not kidding

I just ordered a Honda Fit after seeing this article this am. No kidding

Mth: the market doesn’t work that way. All investors want is profit. They don’t care about anything else. If everyone has to suffer so their precious company can get a profit, then so be it. Sad thinking, I know.

get our worthless crooked president out of office and someone in office that isn’t on the oil companys payroll and will actually INVESTIGATE collusion and price fixing. Yeah I know an HONEST politician a REAL oxymoron like hot water heater.

Fit is a great ride. If you really did buy one, congrats

GET IN MY BELLY.

never seen a saggy chin before. thats pretty crazy

Dictionary: file under “Fat and happy.”

from the dictionary for all the guys using cuss words and “you’re an idiot” type assertions:

An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin, literally “argument against the person”) or attacking the messenger [or shooting the messenger], involves replying to an argument or assertion by attacking the person presenting the argument or assertion rather than the argument itself.

in a debate or in a logic class, you just made the simplest / fastest discrediting logical attack available.

——————————————–

what i find interesting is that there are a lot of people that complain about price gouging whereas there true economists say that there is literally no such thing as a price gouge but rather an equilibrium price.

Also note that in my argument, I mentioned the some inelastic demand of gasoline (people have to drive to work) but they don’t have to drive gas guzzlers. i realize that it’s no fun to drive and pay $55 (which i just did) to fill an Explorer (V6 — thx Ford) but I choose it b/c i like the room and the utility. we have a i-5 turbo v50 that gets 32mpg and the pain isnt nearly there… it’s my choice and they’re the supplier.

and btw, food more than subsistence nourishment is a luxury… I eat $50 steaks and about $45 dollars of it is pure luxury.

http://www.fairtax.org

To all Americans,

You are just 280 million people, but you use more than 30% or more of all fossil fuels and you have more than 25% of the worlds air pollution on your account so

HEY, WHAT IS WRONG PAYING A BIT MORE FOR YOUR FUEL, STOP MAKING THESE INSANE SUV’S, REBUILT THE ENERGY INDUSTRY AND WHAT SO MORE IS IN AN OBSOLETE STATE.

In Europe we pay $1,00 for a litre, so we subsidise your fuel, the Japanese and Chinese buy your treasury bonds by the bulk, otherwise the deficits of the US would even be worse.

SO STOP COMPLAINING OK.

That is the great thing about the FREEDOM we have here JJ. We can buy what we want, or choose not to. Just because we have a smaller population than China, means we should use less? Why, because YOU said so? We don’t care what you pay in Europe, just like you don’t care what we pay here. And I am sorry to say YOU DO NOT subsidise our fuel. Just like you think we should stop making SUVs, I think you should stop making gas guzzling sports cars. My SUV gets the same approximate mileage (16/21 MPG) as the average “sports” car, and I can actually haul my tools and/or my family, all at once.

#66: LMAO!

Its up to us to bring the prices down. The less we buy the less they make. There is still alot of things each person can do to save gas and it all adds up.

JJ… subsidizing US gas?? The US subsidizes your defense there in Europe and have since ‘45. Billions and billions. You have absolutely zero to hang over the US. Please don’t make this a national thing.

If you think you can manipulate the price of gasoline with your tirades, then you are … pretty damn funny.

The only thing worse than a gas guzzler is a pompous intellectual. Gimme a Hummer driver any day.

#8

Hate those compariasons. When I am drinking 10-gallons of water a day, then we can start a fair compariason. Tired of that argument!!

Well, demand & supply will fix this. In the long run more people will turn to econo cars and all of a sudden we could see $20/barrel oil again. Big oil can only screw you so much. I still see a lot of f_ckers driving to work alone in Expeditions and Suburbans. They are to blame. Of course, this worked the same way drug dealers get their victims. Cheap gas for 10 years, everyone buys humongous gas guzzlers then they screw you and you can’t do anything about it. The government sucks because they charge gas guzzler tax on cars that get 20mpg but the SUVS that get 10mpg get a free pass. Don’t get me going on that.

*68, sorry for you you still have to haul your tools yourself….wasn’t the US the “richest country” in the world????

Anyway, those in sports cars have others to haul their tools. And yes, the US did a lot for Europe in the past. But the rest of the world did a lot for the US all the years after…..get your economics right mister, read a paper once in a while.

*68, sorry for you you still have to haul your tools yourself….wasn’t the US the “richest country” in the world????

Anyway, those in sports cars have others to haul their tools. And yes, the US did a lot for Europe in the past. But the rest of the world did a lot for the US all the years after…..get your economics right mister, read a paper once in a while.

What is that bulshhhhhhhhhh your talking.