[greasepaint]

PLEASE tell me the return-on-investment.

PLEASE

nobody cares about thruput,
the important numbers
are PROFIT, and INVESTMENT

[never4get]

Grease....oh, they are drunk on the Kool Aide....Milk, cookies and a pat on the head for everyone!!!!

[thackney]

the important numbers are PROFIT, and INVESTMENT

I am discussing profit. When you look at ROI, make sure you look at a time span like a decade. 1998~99 was not that long ago. You don't get return on those investments for a long time in this industry.

[Rodney King]

Looking at Exxon as a whole isn't even all that revealing. From the ground to your gas tank, there are essentially three stages:

Upstream, which is exploring, finding, and drilling for oil

Midstream, which is refining and pipelines

Downstream, which is actually branding and selling the gas at the station.

Exxon does all three. There has been big money in Upstream for the last 6 or 7 years. To look at whether or not there is gouging, you would want to look at downstream profits. They are just not very high. Gasoline marketing is in fact a very very competitive business.

[cbkaty]

PLEASE tell me the return-on-investment.

That's not what your buddies in the MSM are bellowing daily...they are using only the dollar amount of profit...which anyone with even a small brain should understand the more raw dollar revenue the more raw dollar profit.