"Women: You can't live with them, and you can't get them to dress up in a skimpy little Nazi costume and beat you with a warm squash or something." --Emo Philips

Obesity isn't a crisis, our oil prices are
10-28-2005
by Bryan Mack
back to fleetmack.com

3rd quarter results were released this week from the oil companies.  Some people are bitching about the revenues not realizing there's a difference between revenue and profit.  Of course the revenues are higher as we're paying twice as much for gas, that's understandable.   But wouldn't you think that since (according to the reasons they tell us the prices are going up) the oil companies are only passing on their new expenses to me, that their percentage of profits-to-revenue would stay roughly the same?   They couldn't possibly be taking more ~profit~ exponentially, could they?  I took the liberty of using the above data (taken from the Denver Post today, Friday October 28, 2005) to check the percentage of profits these companies are making this year as opposed to last year.

These are quite simple calculations.  You simply take their Net Income (Profit) and divide it by their revenue.  You will see that in the case of every major petroleum company, the only one not making a higher percentage of profit is BP, I smell Anderson Consulting and some rich CEOs and CFOs over in England.  For now I'm going to deal with ConocoPhillips, Marathon, Shell, and ExxonMobil.   Specifically, I'm going to drill down (pun intended) to ExxonMobil for our example.

ExxonMobil, the third quarter, just three months, racked up 100 billion dollars. (I only typed that figure that way because I wanted to sound like Dr. Evil). 9.83% of $100 billion is $9.92 billion.  I understand that a business can and should grow & prosper, but in one year to increase their percentage 2 1/2% is absurd.  Had they made the same percentage (7.46%) of profit-to-revenue this quarter of 2005 as they did last year, they would have had net profits of $7.51 billion.  If we take the actual 2005 net profit and subtract from it the net profit with last year's net income percentage, we see that this quarter, they took ($.9.92billion - $7.51 billion) an extra $2.4 billioin from us.   $2,400,000,000!!!!!!  In 3 months!!

It should be noted (and obvious) that I've avoided using all aggregate numbers and dumbed the numbers down to one number.  Additional Profit this quarter.  This is the number that after all their expenses, (salaries, fees, tarriffs, equipment, etc.) they took home in addition to what they took last year.  These numbers are also nominal, and I understand that I should take inflation and expansion into account, but I'm not spending any more than 5 minutes writing this dribble so don't want to waste my time.   When numbers such as "$2.4 billion increase in quarterly profit" are thrown out there, does the 3% inflation rate (3% of $2.4 billion = $72 million) really matter?  No, so don't even email me about that.

I realize I'm repeating myself over and over here, but I need you to see this.   I'm not saying they made $2.4 billion dollars.  They took home $9.9 Billion.   The $2.4 billion is EXTRA money they took - THIS QUARTER - and at the same time, gas has shot up to $3/gallon.  Now understand that one year ago, gas was $1.50/gallon while their profits rose roughly 42% (2.4/5.68).   So my question to you, why was gas 50% less a year ago, and their profits were 42% less?

50-42 = 8.   8%.  Our decrease - their decrease.  8% is the difference. Assuming gas was $1.50 last year, and gas is $3.00 right now - this means that gas should be $1.62 this very second.  Is it?  Just drive down to your local ExxonMobil station and look for yourself.  I use $3 as that what it was during the July-September, although it's actually $2.50 right now.  $2.50-$1.60 = $.90.    My car takes 15 gallons of gas, $15 x .$90 = 13.50.  Each time I'm filling up gas (I do twice a month) I'm throwing away $13.50.   13.50x2 = $27.   $27x12 = $324/year.  I'm GIVING them $324 a year ... with gas at $2.50.   Just throwing it away on top of the extra profit they should be getting, which is ridiculous to begin with.  It's like cutting off a cripple's dick.  They took my legs, I'm in a wheelchair, now they demand an extra $324 from me.  The LEAST they could do is let me keep that $324, but they're greedy fucks, there's no chance in hell they'll do this.

Of course I'm an idiot, so I could be completely wrong about all this and it could make sense another way.  I mean, sure, these high revenues could be from luck, not becuase they're overcharging us at the pump.  There could be a reason that while they're "passing on the higher energy costs" to us and setting all-time corporate net-profit records while raising these prices becuase they "Have" to.  The President of the United States could be telling the truth.  Halliburton may not have lowballed and won the "rebuild Iraq" contract bid (after we blew it up for no reason) and made billions for our oil companies for an understandable reason, for all I know.  There could be a reason I'm unaware of that the president doesn't see a problem with the oil companies taking home an additional $2.4 billion each quarter while middle-class individuals such as myself pay an extra $324/year (minimum) on gas.

Luckily the rich folks get that tax break, I'd hate for them to have to give away part of that $2.4 billion.  Maybe it's not Bush's fault that it happened, I can give him that.  But it certainly is his fault that he *refuses* to regulate it.  I just typed about 2 more paragraphs but deleted them as I don't want to attack anyone, so I'll summarize them by saying this: The oil companies are not at fault.  When kids (oil companies) do something wrong, people always say it's the parents' (President's) fault.   Kids will stay out as late as their parents let them and they'll spend whatever allowance their parents give them.  But when the rules are layed down, children either obey or get punished.  The oil companies are children with no parents.   We let this happen to ourselves, and I'm proud that I supported & preached to vote for the Democrats in the last election.

Thoughts and/or comments should be directed here.

Note: This was originally published on October 28, 2005 on the News page and can be found in the news archives.

Designed using 1152x864 resolution on Mozilla Firefox v. 2.0.0.4