For those who think high gasoline prices are an American problem, a problem that politicians should be doing something to “fix”, a problem that should be “fixed” by taking some kind of actions against American oil companies; the following points of interest are offered:
Today in China - still a low wage developing economy for most of its people, retail gasoline prices are $4.53 a gallon.
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-china-gas-20120320,0,670317.story
The vast majority of the worlds oil reserves are owned and controlled by state owned companies. The portion of the worlds oil reserves owned by United States oil companies is about 2 1/2 percent.
http://www.petrostrategies.org/Links/Worlds_Largest_Oil_and_Gas_Companies_Sites.htm
Big U.S oil companies earn the large sums they do NOT because they control so much oil in the world, but because they are trying to deliver oil and oil related products to the most oil-thirsty consumer market - the U.S.
U.S, oil companies own so little of the world’s oil reserves and the U.S. market is so thirsty for oil and it is such a large market that global demands and global events and global concerns about the oil supplies, not greedy U.S. oil companies, will perenially affect U.S. gasoline prices.
ExxonMobiles profits for 2011 amounted to a little over 12 cents on the dollar, in an industry that has some of the largest capital requirements in the world. They pay more in taxes than they keep in profits.
http://www.finanalys.com/?p=169
Part of the challenges for company like ExxonMobil is they buy more oil than they produce themselves. Their refining throughput is over twice their crude oil production.