First off I know that what I am about to post may not entirely fit into what is normally posted on this site (I am new and have not gotten to far into the site yet), but as a recent college graduate with a degree in accounting (yes very green I know) and a deep interest in finance and economics, I hope I can shed some further light on the subject (a few things will be redundant of earlier posts).

Basically I believe that the record profits by major oil companies was due to the larger revenue they received because more oil was being sold. Because if you make $10 of profit on $100 dollars of revenue and then all of a sudden your revenue (sales) jumps to $1,000 then your profit will rise to $100...hope that makes sense...

To start, by doing some basic calculations from their financial statments you can come up with their profit margins which have historically (and presently) hovered between 8% and 10%. I believe that if there was actual "price gouging" then their margins would have significantly risen.

Next, we need to look at worldwide oil consumption trends. While I do not have the exact information at hand (when I don't have to be at work at 7 in the morning I will dig it back up if anyone needs confirmation), I do know that worldwide consumption has increased dramatically over the past few years. Factor in that the expanding economies of China and India are accounting for the largest increases in consumption (their demand is higher than ours) so naturally the oil companies will tend to ship more oil there than here, and you have a reason why prices have risen in the U.S. Also the political tensions in Nigeria, Iran, Iraq, and Venezuela are causing the market to drive the demand for gas higher which leads to a price increase.

Another possible explanation of the increase in gas prices would be that back in the laste 1990's and early 2000's when we were buying gas for around $1 a gallon and the price of oil was trading at less than $30, the oil companies were not investing to find new sources or oil or alternative energy because the return would have been to low. So maybe we can at least partially blame the price increase on the fact that we were getting it so cheap a few years back and it is finally catching up to us.

Well this ended up not being as long/detailed as I had originally planned due to the NBA finals, and not nearly as well structured as I had wanted, but hopefully I will offer some new insight into the current oil prices. I also hope to maybe spurn some further discussion on the issue...

We are. Oil is traded as a commodity on the exchange just like any stock is. The prices rise and fall going by Daily events and things of that nature. The price we pay at the pumps is not goverened by the oil companies so much as its goverened by speculators. Have you ever heard Hugo Chavez ranting about it?
Its no real conspiracy that these companies are making record profits. The commodities exchange sets the price of a barrel of oil but it still costs them less then 16.00 and the price at the pump reflects the price on the exchange. Im sure if there is any kind of conspiracy it would be at the speculators level.

Great posts ThepieMaN and beshore.

People see the price at the pump and automaticly go after the middle man and the onemaking the money. But the ones that are doing the real "unethical" thing is the speculators that dictate the price of oil. And we had it so cheap so long we got used to cheap fuel and then it went up in a shor period of time. But in my opinion it is too high because of political stuff but that is just how the market and economy works.

The point of a business is to create a product and to make a profit to continue being in business and to increase the stakeholders wealth. Why should they be penalized just because they are so good at it? You dont like it, make your own ethanol or biodiesel or buy some XOM, BP, VAL...stock and use its increasing value to buy your gas.

And look at their market caps a few years back when they werent making near the profit of today.

I think that gas prices should be cut untill the oil companies are making reasonable profits...

The Saud Royal Family sets the price of oil. They pump more and export more crude oil than anyone in the world. And when you add up the various other kings and qamirs and royals which pump oil (Kuwait, UAE, Qatar) in the middle east, they control the price of the oil. That is market price.

If they feel terrorist are going to attack their facilities, they raise the price. If they feel insurgents and rebels will attack their pipelines, they raise the price. If they feel the various countries who control waterways and land in which their oil flows over and through are going to become hostile in negotiations, they raise the price. That is the open market. But inflation will compensate.

Russia is slowly building its oil market to Soviet era standards. The lack of production by the Russians after the collapse is the cause of many current 'peak oil' predictions. The Russians, since 1998 (when Osama declared war on the US) have been recieving massive amounts of finance through foreign oil companies. Royal Dutch Shell recently had to relinquish nearly all of its stake in the development it has poured into the Sakhalin-II project. Gazprom and Lukoil are taking over.

The Arab Mafia (Al-Queda), the fight for Central Asia, Kurdistan, Iraq, Western Africa, North Africa, Indonesia, Russia, Venezuela, Britain, France, Canada, and the United States are all sources with the ablity to mitigate conflicts which could further increase the price of oil.

They do not set the price of oil and this is well known. The Saudis have excess capacity and there is rarely if every physical shortages on the global markets.



They do not control the price of oil or the oil markets and all those countries are dependent on their massive oil incomes to fund their welfare states.



Once again they do not direct control the price of all and the best they could do is pump less oil which might then affect the market prices a few weeks later.



How?



How?



Where is the evidence that the lying peak oil doomer mob even bothers using facts such as the decline of production after the Russian reforms?
Massive financing? Sources?



So international producers are being pushed out?



The US invasions and state terror against elected governments have been a desperate attempt to restrict the production of oil, not to free if for global consumption. Peak oil might happen near the turn of the century but until then there is really not reason for prices to rise for any other reason than the quickly depreciating USD which still ( due to 'international' accords) dominates the global oil markets.

Please stop blaming Arabs for problems they did not cause or can really affect, without risking their entire countries, as that just encourages people to believe that US intervention and peak oil in general are based on some kind of geological reality.

The US intervenes in the ME because it must restrict the flow of oil to ensure that a few more dollars it prints may actually be required by those who would otherwise have to be forced to accept them.

Stellar


[edit on 7-1-2007 by StellarX]

You have to be kidding me right? You know that it cost $5 to pump one barrel of oil out of the ground in Saudi Arabia? Where do you think the other $50-$60 comes from?


































































BRIBES!!!!

I love how it's now criminal to make a profit in the United States.

I think the problem is people only want to address revenue and profit, which is often an indication of consumption.

The point where they want to stick their fingers in their ears and say "la la la" is when you mention profit margin, and the fact that oil companies are generally running middle of the pack. If you want to talk about profit margin, then we should be pursuing companies like Microsoft much harder than oil companies.

Profit margin is the true indicator as to whether the consumer is being gouged or not, everything else is simply indicating that the consumer is in love with the product. Americans are in love with oil, there is no way around that.

Actually it costs somewhere between 5- 30 US cents depending on who you believe and what factors you are taking into consideration.



It's not criminal unless your poor or in what we can still call the middle class. The more you have the less concerned the state is with you making more as your 'one of them'.



It's not a indication of consumption as neither supply or massive consumption can come close to explaining the massive oil price hikes since the late 90's.



And since we know what oil companies are doing to us and to the environment to make those profits imagine don't you have reason to suspicious as to what horrible thing the rest are doing? Would you like some links as to what the real profit makers ( big pharma) is making and what many of their products are doing to the human beings that are lucky enough to be able to afford their 'cures' ?



Sure but Microsoft is not dealing in commodity we can not go without! Under the current social system people can go without having a pc in the home or working in office with them but how much of modern society is going to have to be changed for us to do without oil? I am sure there are alternatives for those few oil products that can not be easily replaced but surely oil is more important for our general survival ?



No one is in love with oil , Americans get involved in plenty of wars but they don't love them, but without any media and people to inform them as to alternatives they can be co-opted into believing that there are limited ways of gaining the energy they think they need to sustain their current standards of living. It's a question of information and Americans may possible be the most misinformed society on the planet; i won't stand on that claim but i could probably make a half decent argument in favor.

Stellar

Stellar, do you have a better product that can achieve the energy density that oil can? I didn't think so. This isn't the mass media keeping anything from anyone. It's the plain and simple fact that despite scouring the globe, no one has been able to find the energy density to cost ratio that oil offers.

I realize that it's hard for people that do not understand the inter workings of the industry and the technology related to it. But unfortunately it's a simple fact that oil was the greatest discovery human kind has ever made, in the sense that it allowed us to advance in technology exponentially in the last century, but the era of oil, or should I say cheap energy is winding to a close.

Hopefully humankind will find an alternative of the same qualities, or substantially better than oil, but it has not been found yet. People have a strong believe in the ingenuity of humans, and our ability to always find a way out of a jam. The problem is we have found our way into a historical jam given the current energy requirements and population of earth, and we are having trouble coming up with something that is a viable replacement.

When you consider viability, you have to consider it's not simply the fact of creating energy. If we wanted to, we could couple small nuclear reactors into cars. But the truth is, it would be neither safe, nor affordable for nearly everyone. We could create battery powered cars, but they are currently too expensive for the average consumer to accept, plus without significantly more nuclear power plants on line to feed them, we are looking at using just as much fossil fuel, if not more, because of the energy loss in conversion.

So whats the alternative? Solar cars? Not unless you live in Arizona and only drive during the day.

But wait, someone told me about the tar sands in Canada! Oh, you mean the current extraction process makes it nearly net energy neutral and that as a source it's only viable if the price per barrel of oil is sky high already? Bummer.

The age of oil will have ended well before the last drop is pumped from the earth.

Why do we need a 'product' and why can't we just go on using oil if there is nothing else? Current estimates leaves us with at LEAST forty years with the growth trends of a barrel of around 30 USD.



So why do the mass media keeping telling us that peak oil may be happening when there is NO evidence that even gets past casual inspection?



And that cost ratio is based on who's estimations?



And i realize that's it's impossible for misinformed people to arrive at anything approaching the truth. What is so complex about the corporate agenda? Profits trough control is NOT hard to understand.



Human minds allowed us to understand our world and it had very little if anything to do with oil. Before oil become a global commodity we had already discovered how to tap electricity through wind and solar power and oil just happened to be a energy 'source' that could be controlled as the wind and sun never could be.



Not something that is supported by geological evidence.



Sure it has and for well over a hundred years! We even had electric cars in the 1830's!





We do but we are up against people who hate progress, that is not controlled by their agencies, and will do everything in their power to prevent it.



We are in a historical jam because every building is not a giant solar collector, many rivers and streams not hydro plants and mountains and plains not wind power farms. These things would all have been possible if we had simply employed part of our oil bonanza in more constructive fashion! I am obviously aware of other means to do all these things but lest i be called a perpetual motion nut i best stick to simplistic solutions.



We can supposedly not create energy so yeah...



Probably not but it's worth a try! Imagine the required age for a driving license.



They are expensive only because they are not being built or getting the type of publicity the hummer got in the same few years. Like horses were not expensive when no one had them or everyone had cars in 1890!



It's like solar panels don't exist and the wind never toppled any trees....



Electric cars are more efficient and they ALWAYS have been. Solar cars are debatable but as time goes on i am sure we will find ways to convert solar energy more efficiently and as far as i know we already have rather ungainly and not very practical examples that reaches very high speeds for very long times in some places.



What does energy neutral mean? Who does the calculation and why do those crazy canucks claim to be able to do it for thirty dollars a barrel? Does it really matter if it's 'energy neutral' when the energy were 'generated' by solar or wind installations?



The age of oil should have never started and i wouldn't had not a few very powerful men been able to manipulate the markets to gain further monopolies.

Stellar

You are totally Monday morning QBing the situation. Yes, if humankind had gone a different direction, things may have been different. If there were solar panels on every roof in the nation, then things could probably be different, but they aren't.

p.s. As far as "creating energy", you are correct, you cannot "create" energy. I misspoke, I should have said convert energy into a usable form.

The point is, that yes, there are other technologies out there, and maybe we could serve our needs, but mankind has gone too far down the path. There is no way we can reverse course in enough time and avoid problems. If we had started in the 1980's maybe, but no one wanted to listen. People don't realize what oil means to our everday life. It isn't just gasonline in your cars. It's the trucks delivering things, it's the ships sailing around the world, it's the computer keyboard, heck the computer you are using right now. It is the sole of the sneakers you are wearing, it is the tires on your car, it is the dashboard in your car. It is the television set you are watching, it is the light switch you just turned off. I could go on for hours about all the things that involve petroleum based products. The entire world runs on petroleum, you can't just switch it off one day and go another direction.

And as far as the Tar sands. The tar sands are called "energy intensive. Which means that they are likely very close to negative EROEI (energy returned on energy invested). If you have a negative EROEI on something, it means it isn't worth producing. They are currently doing it in the hopes that as scale and technology increases, cost will come down, but no one is sure how that will work out.

I find it comical that you are willing to quote representatives of the tar sands operation as saying that it is economically viable at $30 a barrel, yet you have an inherent distrust of everyone else.

Humanity did not pick the current direction and there is in my knowledge no worthwhile evidence that human industrial activity causes what little global warming we may be observing.



But there could have been decades ago given the very same investment money the US and other states spent on subsidising the oil industry. It was a decision in favour of monopolistic enterprise and social control and i am not about to have you blame either me or humanity for it.



We all make mistakes and i happy to observe that you are one of the few that bothers to admit even these accidental , i am going to give you the benefit of my doubt, mistakes.



Mankind were led down a certain path but again i do not believe that the path chosen for us has sealed our fates. I do not believe that it's too late to change our course and bring about climates of our choosing.



What evidence will you introduce to support that claim?



Show me the evidence that average people have not always chosen environmental protection when there were clearly presented choices based on a understanding of how we interact with nature. Show me that people will not choose to protect nature as best they can ( why do people have gardens that costs them so much to maintain?) once their basic needs are met?



I believe most of the people who are likely to respond to your posts here are aware of just how much our economics have been warped into using oil... I believe there are very real alternatives in the vast majority of cases and where necessary we will just have to make small sacrifices in terms of availability or price.



That's about as much of a fact as i am aware of. I doubt it will happen fast or soon no matter what the AGW doomsayers say ( people will ignore them and keep trying to make a living) but i also happen to believe that given proper investment and political willpower we could probably covert to such systems in a decade or two and thus long before even the most craziest of global warming predictions.



It's not that i know either way but until you do know ( 'likely' does not cut it for me) i would ask you not to use it as support for claiming that there are not alternatives.



It does not in fact mean that. What it means is that there are costs that have to be absorbed elsewhere. As i understand the process uses massive amounts of fresh water and the like but for a country like Canada that is joke and a cost that can be ignored with a smile. In the end the production cost may not include the subsidies they may have received from the Canadian taxpayers but neither are the massive subsidies to the oil companies reflected in the skyrocketing cost of oil. If they say they can produce oil for around 30 dollars a barrel that means they can turn a very good profit and if you are not aware juts ask as i have plenty of topical quotes and facts.



The cost is already coming down and they were turning a nice profit even with oil in the thirty dollar range.



Why should i not believe them when they tell me they produce oil from tar sands and have their audited details for everyone to see? It's one thing not to trust what a given organization says but that's when you go investigate and to the best of your abilities determine the truth.



In fact i believe the oil industry, the geologist and the economist when they say that oil will be with us for a very very long time to come. There are simply no scientific or economic reasons to suspect that oil at around 100 USD will not make it a commonly available resource till well into the next century. At thirty - 50 USD a barrels oil production can easily keep pace with demand for probably another four or five decades and i believe that the citizens of the world will increasingly demand alternatives to internal combustion as we go forward.

Stellar

I just wanted to comment on one thing regarding the tar sands.

Even if they are able to turn a nice profit at $30 a barrel, does it even matter from a supply perspective?

At best, the Alberta tar sands are predicted to produce around 1.2 million barrels per day.

The United States alone consumes well over 20 million barrels per day. Worldwide it is well over 100 million.

This is like people proposing corn ethanol as a solution. In order to supply the United States with ethanol in place of gasoline, it would require nearly every square inch of farm land in the country to grow corn for fuel.

as a side note, I am not sure if you were implying this in your post or not, but I do not believe in man made global warming. At least I do not believe that there is any evidence that we are having a significant impact on the current rise in global temperatures. I believe the evidence shows we are in a natural cycle. An ice age was predicted in the 70's

[edit on 2-11-2007 by TheStarMan]

Sure it matters as there are such reserves all over the world and according the the following it is fast becoming very profitable.





They are already producing a million barrels a day

and given that oil price ( adjusted for real inflation) have been relatively consistently declining since the mid 70's that volumes tells me that at current prices they could produce tens of millions per day given investment and a relatively long ( the article says expertise and machinery is driving productions prices up ) period of development.



www.nationmaster.com...

The world total is still less than 85 million a day...



Bio fuels are a epicly horrible idea and cruel joke on those who will be forced to raise it as cash crop and while the US could probably become self sufficient American citizens wont be better off for it. I think i can prove that there remains more than substantial reserves of oil and coal in the US and that coal-fuel ( like we do in South-Africa), tar sands and the like and regular off short on onshore drilling could probably still yield for the US a twenty odd million barrels a day making it self sufficient for decades to come. It's not that there isn't oil reserves but that those in power believe they can make a better profit from not using those reserves and thus increasing profit margins while hiding their gauging behind such facades as global warming and 'peak oil'.



If you could arrive at that point of view by yourself i think you will on closer inspection find that the same trickery and manipulation have been employed to talk about the storm in teacup that is peak oil. I have posted extensively on both these issues in the past so your free to either pose questions related to peak oil or just ask and or look up my previous posts.

Stellar

It is not doing us any good to worry about who earned the most marbles in the sand box because this is the least of our worries. What we should be worried about is this myth of Peak Oil that has been hatched by none other than big oil and the shadow government. There are several sources that will tell you that Peak Oil is comming very soon. Fuel will be going for $5.00 - $6.00 per gallon, the food industry will be crippled as well as the transportation industry. Our economy will crumble under our feet and there will be wide spread homelessness, starvation, death and civil war with multiple opponents. many will die and America will fall into a deep depression.

It is a myth that will come true because it is part of an elaborate design. The Oil companies want this as do the Russian's, Venesuela, Brizil, Saudi Arabia plus a host of other countries and especially the Chinese. In order for us to be eliminated as a super power we must be destroyed from within. Big oil and key figures in the government knew this was the plan, but rather than standing up for the Country, they chose to make obsene profits and be imune from the slow death of our Nation.

You may all write me off as a doom and gloomer or a nut, but I am just one man who happens to have sense for these kinds of things.
All I can tell you is, look for major events to begin to unfold at a very rapid pace in the fall of 2008 and a probable Nation Wide matrial law being enforced by UN troops from China mainly, by early 2009. Store food and water or ways of getting clean water. Build groups of neighbors that you rely on for support and stock pile ammo. Use common sense with this and don't make a big fuss about it. The world will not end, but it will change from what you know it as now.

See they have dumbed down our kids with Hollywood and Liberalism for years. Too many drink the coolaide to even notice whats going on. There will be resistance when all of this goes down, but it will only be small pockets scattered accross the Country. The majority will cow tail to their demands and obey even as they starve without lifting a finger. Why do you think the establishment has slowly taken out the competitive nature in our kids and removed God from us as much as they could? Simple! All of this, the dodge ball in school, competitivness in sports, anger management, ridilin, acceptance of the gay agenda, open boarders, social programs, you name it, was all part of the overall plan to make us a spineless society. The pockets of resistance I speak of might be great in the beginning, but when devided so badly from within, will lack direction and no one will have the ability to change this in the next year.

It's not the era of the revolutionary war where men died for the dream of a Nation of Liberty, Freedom and the pursuit of happiness. Too many these days would rather live in a teranical state than die for something they can't see or believe in anymore. In the end it's all about survival. Even the military will fold only because they have been trained to follow orders without question. There may be a few thousand soldiers resist, but what will say 20-50,000 patriots do against perhaps 500,000 Russian and Chinese UN troops.

The good news is, I believe in the America my Grandfather fought for. This will happen, but after a few years, things will change again. America will not die, just be under seige. Eventually we will find our spines and do what's right. The dream will live again. I might not live to see it, but I'll do my best to see my son does. God Bless America!

Something that just struck me over the weekend, resulting in one of those "Mmmmm" moments.

1. We are being told that the high cost of Gasoline / Diesel fuel is due to the increasing price per barrel of crude and increased demand. Now then, production has not increased any significant amount and yet we see no drop in availability due to increased demand elsewhere.

2. The price, in $USD has indeed increased, but at the same time the $USD has dropped in value against other currencies.

3. Given the fact that the oil companies are paying more $USD per barrel to the producers and the subsequent rise in price at the pumps, I'd expect to see a drop or, at the very least, a flattening of oil company profits. However, all the big oil companies are posting never before seen record profits. Then there is the extra revenue to the government from the increased prices. I wonder how much extra the treasury has received from fuel duty in the last few months, against the same time last year?

I smell a great big dirty rat.

Oh! I almost forgot, diesel fuel could well rise a helluva lot more. I read a couple of weeks ago that moves are underway to make it mandatory for shipping lines to convert their engines to run on diesel instead of the current fuel oil, thus pushing up the price due to the extra demand. In fact, rigging the system to deliberately increase demand.