Posted on 03/09/2008 2:43:35 PM PDT by fweingart
ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- The buck stops here: This is Bush's recession, his legacy.
It could be a chapter in a future edition of Jacob Weisberg's "The Bush Tragedy," with new comparisons to "Henry V" and other great Shakespearean tragedies. In a few sentences, the opening lines could highlight why this is now Bush's recession, and his alone.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
Whether we have a formal declaration of war or something less than that doesn’t change the fact that we are at war. To win this war we don’t need a draft, or rationing, and if the Chinese want to finance it for us it’s fine with me.
As far as the “stimulus” check we’ll be receiving later this spring it is nothing more than an increase in the personal exemption. It may not be perfect but it’s better than nothing. I do not believe in “shared pain is good” economics.
"America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant."
For some the “Sky is always falling” here on Free Republic.
It wouldn’t surprise me if some post on DU, too.
Election year on FR. A substantial amount of the posts on this thread are probably bought and paid for by the DNC.
When it comes to public hatred of big business, there’s no better target than oil companies. This hatred has been all the more intense since Exxon Mobil announced last year’s net income at $40.6 billion, the largest-ever profit for a publicly-traded company. With the threat of recession looming, many policymakers have been tempted to pay for relief measures by raising taxes on “Big Oil”—including the House’s recent bill rolling back tax deductions on integrated oil companies (though leaving them in place for other companies). Understandable as this impulse may be, it is a bad idea for average Americans. If the government tries to “do something” about record oil profits, it won’t provide meaningful relief revenue, but will certainly raise the price at the pump.
Part of the reason for giant oil profits is that the industry itself is huge. But viewed in relative terms, oil and gas earnings are less impressive. The industry’s net profit per dollar of revenue was just under 9 cents, compared to 13 cents for the S&P 500, meaning the “markup” for the oil and gas industry is below average.
Granted, total profits reported by these companies will be large, because the industry volume is enormous. But why did the integrated oil majors do so well in 2007? The answer is record oil prices, which are set by supply and demand on the world market. The average price of crude was $72.30 per barrel in 2007, compared to a historical average of $25.95 during the period 1986 – 2006. This explains why not only Exxon Mobil, but most of its competitors, had strong years: Royal Dutch Shell earned $31.3 billion, Chevron earned $18.7 billion, and ConocoPhillips came in with a respectable $11.9 billion annual profit.
So now we’ve pushed back the problem one step, and we have to ask, Why were oil prices so high last year? Perhaps the greedy oil companies colluded to restrict supply, and stick it to the helpless consumers!
The problem with this theory is that the supply of oil is also at an all-time high. The worldwide average number of barrels produced per day was an estimated 84.8 million in 2007, compared to 72.4 million during the period 1986 – 2006. The oil industry responds to high prices just as any other industry does. When the price of a product goes up, companies have the incentive to sell more of it.
High oil prices in recent years are caused not by supply restrictions, but by huge increases in demand. As the economies of places such as China and India boom, they draw oil and other commodities to them. Higher market prices signal the increased scarcity of these resources, causing businesses and consumers around the world to economize more carefully in their usage, whether that means finding alternate production techniques or carpooling to work. At the same time, the high prices give incentives to locate and develop more oil reserves. Given the economic realities, these outcomes are exactly what we want to happen.
Whether or not one views these market forces as benign, jacking up taxes on oil companies will only make things worse. When you raise taxes on an activity, people engage in less of it; that’s the whole point of sin taxes on liquor and cigarettes. But in this case, we’re taxing the companies who produce oil – meaning less production and higher consumer prices.
Raising taxes on the production of oil will reduce its supply, causing oil and gasoline prices to rise even further. They sometimes call it a “windfall” tax, but in truth crude oil doesn’t grow on trees. It can take over a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment to find and prepare an oil field for large-scale production.
Oil companies are already paying exorbitant tax bills. In 2006, the industry paid $81 billion in income taxes, and almost certainly paid more in 2007 as profits were higher. (The industry data for 2007 have not yet been compiled.)
I note that Exxon pays the equivalant in one year of the taxes paid by 1/2 !!! of US taxpayers. I've noted before that Hannity likes to tout that oil companies don't pay taxes, when in actual fact they pay huge taxes, but clearly do pass them on to taxpayers. There is a difference.
I forgot to mention that. Also the recently discovered massive natural gas reserves under Pennsylvania. Range Resources believes this could be the largest discovery in 20-30 years.
The North Dakota oil and Penn natural gas are only able to be tapped with the new technolgy. There is still plenty of conventional fields left to discover and exploit. The people of our country have been brainwashed into the ‘peak’ oil theroy and told even if we tap this field or that it will only lessen our dependance on foreign oil x %. It is that thinking that got us in this mess. We can’t use eco friendly techniques to drill ANWR, but the Russians can use what ever method they choose to despoil Siberia. Where are the enviro wackos on the Chinese destroying their near coastal waters in their search for oil? It is always America’s fault, and America’s responsibility to be the only one to clean the air, to clean the water, to prevent the earth from getting a fever. Makes me sick.
I wish Chevron the best with its process.
Which posts would that be?
If you have to ask . . . .
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/03/chevron-unveils.html
Chevron Unveils New Refining Technology That Converts Ultra-Heavy Oil Into Fuel; Up to 100% Conversion
7 March 2008
Chevron’s basic heavy-oil conversion process. The key is the preparation of the highly active catalyst incorporating the use of vacuum gas oil (vacuum resid). Click to enlarge.
Chevron Corporation plans to build a pre-commercial plant at its refinery in Pascagoula, Miss., to test the technical and economic viability of a new heavy-oil upgrading technology called Vacuum Resid Slurry Hydrocracking (VRSH). VRSH has the potential to significantly increase yields of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from heavy and ultra-heavy crude oils and could be used to increase and upgrade production of heavy oil resources, according to Chevron
Your little factoid alone should drop oil prices...shouldn’t it????
You got me. I am a DEMOCRAT ! Nice detective work my friend!
I had an interesting experience about 3 weeks ago. I was standing in line at the supermarket with a pretty full cart.
There was a fellow in a wheelchair behind me who just had a couple things, so I asked him if he wanted to go first, because the line was long.
He said no, he was in no hurry, he was just enjoying himself, and had just retired from 25 tears of work up north.
He had had an aneurysm on his aorta and they fixed it but had to take it easy.
He had been a hydraulic engineer.
In Alaska.
At Prudhoe Bay.
I talked to him long enough to know that HE KNEW what he was talking about. He said he saw samples of oil that were so pure they practically looked like Wesson corn oil.
It would amaze him if we’ve gotten even two percent of what’s up there.
According to him, it’s very rare for any exploration to go on and NOT FIND oil. It’s ALL OVER the Alaska coastline and surveys in the Arctic ocean CONSISTENTLY show VAST quantities of oil.
A very interesting chat... and I believe him!
Why don't you prove it right here?
Prove what? That you are a Democrat? Are you really that stupid?
Once again you got me.
As long as your studying the congress of the 1890s, take a look at how many constituents there were per house member.
Congress people need large staffs to keep up with their overly large districts. The failure to have the house of representatives keep up with the growth of the general population turns them from the house of the people they were intended to be into out-of-touch elites.
Right. You’ll have to wait until about July 15th to have been told we had two quarters of negative growth. Are you retired or filthy rich? Either way, better get yourself some of that loot in gold and silver and some cash as well. This year we’ll muddle through. Next year will see a collapse of the fiat banking system. It will come back, but it’s gonna hurt, ouch.
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