It is not the shipping and refining making most of our gasoline price increase. It is the crude oil driving the cost. The same crude oil we are not allowed to produce from ANWR, Eastern Gulf of Mexico, Offshore Western Coast and most of our OCS.
Supply
Demand
When supply exceeds demand, prices fall.
When demand exceeds supply, prices rise.
If you are the supplier, you are not going to flood the market with product. Why not? Because that would make prices fall.
So, does the oil exec prefer selling 1 billion gallons of gas at $2.50 or selling that 1 billion gallons at $4.00?
The same shipping and refining took place to create that $2.50/gal gas as that $4.00/gal gas.
He can do it only as long as somebody else doesn't come along with $2.50 gas and eat the market. You can't drink gasoline, and storage of volatile compounds isn't free.
You are exposing yourself to ridicule by your posts. Watch for incoming.
Are you intentionally ignoring that the cost of the raw product has increased, and that the profit margin hasn't changed?
Also, any businessman worth his salt knows that the more people you supply with their needs, the more money you make.
Yeah, but at $135/barrel of crude, it cost $3.21 per GALLON of raw material (42 gallons in a barrel), before it even gets to the refinery.
It's not total profit, it's profit margin. For 2006 alone, Exxon Mobil paid 27 billion in US Federal income tax. For that same year, the bottom 50% of all taxpayers in the US paid 26.5 billion in US Federal income tax. Total taxes for the year paid by Exxon Mobil were around $107 billion.
I have read many times that Exxon's profit per gallon is around 8.5 to 9 cents per gallon. But there is not a state in this country where you'll pay less than 20 cents per gallon in combined federal and state taxes. Who is really to blame?
Yes oil companies are doing well. But look at it this way. The US is estimated to have 300 million people in it. If even only 1/3 of those drive, that is 100 million people driving, 40 billion in profits for the year is 400 dollars per driving person per year. That is $33.33 a month. I realize this is a simple equation, and doesn't reflect actual profits per driver, because that profit comes from a lot more than just retail gasoline sales. We have diesel, jet fuel, heating fuel, plastics and a bunch of other products that are also made from this barrel. So that $33.33 per month per driver is reduced further.
It is not the shipping and refining making most of our gasoline price increase. It is the crude oil driving the cost. The same crude oil we are not allowed to produce from ANWR, Eastern Gulf of Mexico, Offshore Western Coast and most of our OCS.