Most of the refiners are owned or part-owned by an oil major, who also own producing assets (oil leases with wells, or an interest in others that do that), they are diversified. Some parts of all that certainly do make a lot on rising oil prices.
Yeah, I have family insiders.
What you say is true: the majors have a diversity of going concerns; some more profitable than others, so some gravy over here offsets losses over there, and ho-hum performance in this, combines with a sliver of green from that...and there’s always the contract terms with distribution; some of which they own, and other they don’t, and there’s the spot market sales. There are many pieces to the picture.
I vividly recall “The Big News” the leftards were crowing about a few years back that Exxon Mobile “paid no taxes” — well, they paid no ADDITIONAL taxes because they had logged a whopping bottom-of-the-balance-sheet enterprise-wide profit of (** fanfare **) less than 9% that year.
woo-hoo
Look, you know, and I know; the same people bitching about “Big Oil” profits turn right around and — without batting an eyelash — pay over 100% markup on a vast array of consumer products every single day. Bought new speakers for your sound system? You likely got socked for between 200 and 300%; they’re about the most marked-up line of products out there, but I don’t hear a roar of condemnation for “Big Audio.” Consumers across the spectrum are paying high double- and even triple-digit profit margins on all manner of products and services all the time. It’s just these other industries aren’t being politicized, vilified, and put under the microscope over at the New York Times. Just to snatch another industry out of the blue — Pepsico logged 13% growth year-on-year at about 10% bottom-line profit, and I don’t hear a sea of railing accusations from “the usual suspects.”
So, it’s REALLY NOT about the magnitude of the actual bottom line profit figure; it’s making political hay, ramming an agenda, targets of opportunity, dirty pool, and — frankly — that there’s just some people who CANNOT get through their day without something to bitch about — they’ve gotta have a target to hate on. And I’ve seen that syndrome up close; you correct a problem that resolves their gripe with one target, they will find another target within 24 hours.
[Prolly ‘cuz their own lives are vying for that slot in their consciousness, and they can’t have that, so they’re desperate to find an EXTERNAL proxy. You know the deal.]
At the day’s end, the entire gripe session about oil company profits just does not rile me the least little bit; it’s a red herring — a shiny object political pols use to get the heat of public condemnation shifted away from them and their villainy. When my State (CA) is taking a $0.67 out of every gallon pumped — about 14% on a pump price of $4.899/ga — it’s obvious to me that the 9% “big oil” will end up with is NOT my primary target, nor is it the one that should be getting ANYONE worked up.