Exxon's record $11.6 B 3 months

[Dan Lambskin]

It's called math WR. JT's quote says:



So if gas is $4.00 per gallon and they are making 7 cents per gallon, that's a 1.75% profit margin. Simple math, I didn't pull 1.75% out of thin air, I'm going by what they said. And I am refuting their statement as untrue, which you agree with since you said they make around 9% (so I have no idea what you're arguing about, we agree that they make more than what they say they make). Exxon is saying they have a 1.75% profit margin on gas, not me. I am saying they make much more than that per gallon and they are lying to us in order to not look like the crooks that they are.

Your denominator is wrong, Madison. See my last post.

I read your last post on it, but this is really simple. A 7 cent profit on a $4 item is a profit of 1.75%. Pull up any calculator and multiply 4.00 by 1.75% and you will get 0.07. Not sure why that is confusing people.

Now if they are making 9% like WR says, then they would be making 36 cents profit per gallon, which is a very large difference from the 7 cents they are claiming they make.

i think he's saying Exxons total 9% profit is made up of more than just gasoline since oil is used in many other products

[wrveres]

Think about that for a minute. windmills have been around for 400-500 years?? i don't know and i am not going to look it up. they have been around for a long while. the world has been trying to answer to energy question since the industrial revolution began over a hundred years ago ... If friggin Windmills were the answer, the county would be littered with them right now. some Rockefeller would have them things in every back yard, sitting next to the wind chimes ...

That's terrible logic. That's like saying "all the cool kids smoke cigarettes, therefore cigarettes are cool" or "Obama's president, therefore America loves Democrats" or "McDonald's must be healthy because everyone eats it".

America loves democrats cus they are so easy to manipulate.

And its not horrible logic. its perfect logic. If using a windmill to power your home was cheaper than oil, some Rockefeller would of had em on display for you to buy at 10 outlets within 20 miles of your home. I guarantee it.

Oil is nice because it's cheap and easy to work with right now, but it's also nonrenewable, nasty for the environment, and about to become expensive. When we run out of our available oil reserves and have to spend billions of dollars to extract oil from shale (which is very expensive and horrendously inefficient, not to mention about as dirty as coal), you can count on gasoline upwards of $15 a gallon. Plus, literally everything will be more expensive because transportation costs will be through the roof, as will the production costs of any petroleum-based product.

thanks for the lesson. tell me something we, you, me, the government, your mom, my mom, your snotty sister, and the chic who smiled at me last night, doesn't already know.

Yep, it will have to involve oil.

thats what i wanted to see.

But the role of oil will have to be dramatically reduced. At the very least, we need to build more nuclear power plants and create/enforce laws requiring the reprocessing of nuclear fuel.

we had one being built. heck almost finished too. and your boy shut it down cus of politics. it was no where near a tsunami zone.

There's not much innovation to be had in oil anymore, anyway; ingenuity only matters when we're talking about new things.

not true. just up thread you mentioned shale. i realize that's natural gas, so i don't need the lesson, but its innovation, and American innovation will make it work. Plus they have those new rigs they are running in the gulf that support many wells at a time, lowering the overall foot print. What about the "Blow Out Preventer" i guarandamntee you that thing is under going innovation as we speak. We havent even begun to look at the other benefits of oil, you are going to need to replace. Not just energy, but chemicals that you use daily, and plastics and everything.

That's why I'm changing my major from biochemistry to physical chemistry, so I can work with a couple of my professors on solar energy research and hopefully get into a career that helps solve our oil dependency.

your going to get yourself on the government tit.

good solid work.

[StlSluggers]

mweir, ladies and gentlemen

[wrveres]

mweir, ladies and gentlemen

mweir is good people

[StlSluggers]

mweir, ladies and gentlemen

mweir is good people

that may be, but his finger apparently has a small seizure everything he hits the quote button

[wrveres]

mweir, ladies and gentlemen

mweir is good people

that may be, but his finger apparently has a small seizure everything he hits the quote button

there is more than one way to have a conversation, and its not my fault that mweir copies me.

[Neato Torpedo]

Think about that for a minute. windmills have been around for 400-500 years?? i don't know and i am not going to look it up. they have been around for a long while. the world has been trying to answer to energy question since the industrial revolution began over a hundred years ago ... If friggin Windmills were the answer, the county would be littered with them right now. some Rockefeller would have them things in every back yard, sitting next to the wind chimes ...

That's terrible logic. That's like saying "all the cool kids smoke cigarettes, therefore cigarettes are cool" or "Obama's president, therefore America loves Democrats" or "McDonald's must be healthy because everyone eats it".

America loves democrats cus they are so easy to manipulate.

And its not horrible logic. its perfect logic. If using a windmill to power your home was cheaper than oil, some Rockefeller would of had em on display for you to buy at 10 outlets within 20 miles of your home. I guarantee it.

It's not cheaper now, but it will be in 30-40 years.

But the role of oil will have to be dramatically reduced. At the very least, we need to build more nuclear power plants and create/enforce laws requiring the reprocessing of nuclear fuel.

we had one being built. heck almost finished too. and your boy shut it down cus of politics. it was no where near a tsunami zone.

Who shut what down? By "your boy" do you mean Obama, because it's pretty well known that he supports nuclear power.

There's not much innovation to be had in oil anymore, anyway; ingenuity only matters when we're talking about new things.

not true. just up thread you mentioned shale. i realize that's natural gas, so i don't need the lesson, but its innovation, and American innovation will make it work. Plus they have those new rigs they are running in the gulf that support many wells at a time, lowering the overall foot print. What about the "Blow Out Preventer" i guarandamntee you that thing is under going innovation as we speak. We havent even begun to look at the other benefits of oil, you are going to need to replace. Not just energy, but chemicals that you use daily, and plastics and everything.

For this topic (profit, cost, money) I'm not even talking about carbon footprints and pollution. We're talking your language now. We can't feasibly replace all those products made from oil, so we need to save our oil for petroleum based products, and change over to nuclear and renewables to power our energy and transportation infrastructures. Oil is going to become really expensive once we're forced to roll with shale extraction, and by that time we need to have cheaper alternatives at the ready. It's either retain our reliance on oil for energy and transportation, and have the cost of energy, transportation, and petroleum products skyrocket, or switch over to nuclear/renewables so we can keep the prices on petroleum products in a tolerable range.

That's why I'm changing my major from biochemistry to physical chemistry, so I can work with a couple of my professors on solar energy research and hopefully get into a career that helps solve our oil dependency.

your going to get yourself on the government tit.

lol what does this mean?

[Madison]

i think he's saying Exxons total 9% profit is made up of more than just gasoline since oil is used in many other products

No worries here, I'm simply saying I don't believe Exxon's claim that they only make 7 cents per gallon of gasoline.

[StlSluggers]

Thought you guys might like to know that 2 firms are being sued by the CFTC for controlling as much as 86% of the oil market in the first 4 months of 2008 - when prices were skyrocketing. The gov't estimates they made $50M and is seeking $150M in fines plus a return of the $50M in earnings.

This was all made possible because oil can be traded in futures to people who have zero interest in doing anything with the commodity other than holding it to raising the price.

[Curtis Pride]

i think he's saying Exxons total 9% profit is made up of more than just gasoline since oil is used in many other products

No worries here, I'm simply saying I don't believe Exxon's claim that they only make 7 cents per gallon of gasoline.

If you want to know the breakdown of where your $4 per gall is going, here it is: http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/gasoline/margins/index.php
$2.61 - raw material costs (cost of crude per gallon)
$0.67 - state & federal taxes and fees
$0.58 - refinery costs (there is also some profit build in here - about 10% - so roughly 6 cents)
$0.26 - Distribution, SG&A (there are also profits here - also around 10%, so roughly 2 cents)

And that's how you get 7 (or 8) cents in profit per gallon of branded oil.

Now, maybe you can argue that their margin in the refinery costs is higher than 10% and I can see that in a rising price environment, but the fact is that oil companies are making record profits because gas is expensive because crude oil is expensive (which is not because of some middle east conspiracy, but mostly because the US dollar is weak and gas is priced in dollars, but that's a discussion for another time). Gas is not expensive because oil companies are making record profits. It's the other way around.

Point is, "evil, big oil companies" may possibly be making a quarter per gallon. But the government is getting 70 cents per gallon. So who is gauging us again?