Posted on 04/24/2006 6:37:11 AM PDT by ritewingwarrior
"When did all of these oil mergers take place....
During the CLINTON presidency. "
If they were still two separate companies, the total profits might be the same but the NUMBERS wouldn't be records.
These people are IDIOTS AND LIARS!
The boutique fuels requirement needs to be scaled back for the time being until the ramp up is completed to ease shortages of ethanol.
I would think this is doable by executive order.
This is just one thing the president can do regarding this situation.
This administration has a terrible communications/political coordination effort and is always a day late and a dollar short.
Running around and making BS platitudes like "we are addicted to oil" and "there is no magic solution" just does not cut it with people that are looking for a leader to do something even if it is just better communication with the citizens.
This situation can be turned right back on the Dems. Instead pubbies like Alum Sphincter are calling for communistic solutions. The political ineptitude is absolutely incredible.
Petroleum development and exploration are expensive, California is going to levy a 2% tax on profits of 10 million dollars, about what it takes to drill two wells here, onshore, in Montana. It is a lot more expensive to drill a well elsewhere, depending on where you are. Considering that a refinery could cost well over a billion, how long do you think that tax is going to take to start cutting development in California?
You make next year's drilling and infrastructure development budgets this year.
How is that tax going to help at the pump? The tax will just end up being passed through to another of the two entities which make the MOST money off of a gallon of gasoline--The State and Federal Governments. And it will ultimately come out of the consumer's pocket.
What a SCAM!
Restrict development at every turn, when market and geopolitical factors cause the price to increase, slap on additional regulations to increase the price more, and then blame the oil companies!
Federal motor fuels tax (28 cents/gallon, iirc), plus the federal import tarrif on any ethanol which has to be imported (estimated at 1.6 billion gallons for 2006), plus the federal royalty interest in the well (if any--generally 12.5% of profit on any federal mineral acreage--and over half of the land west of the Mississippi is Federal Government owned), plus any state royalty interests, plus state taxes at the pump, plus sales tax (if applicable), and permitting fees, etc., and who's raking it in?
In the meantime, the oil companies, large and small, have to continue to replace depleted reserves, try to increase domestic reserves, and somehow get the product refined and delivered to the pump, even though some 13% of the Gulf of Mexico facilities are still down from last year's hurricanes.
(And that is not mentioning the 'unrest' in Nigeria, the Venezuelan mess, Iran, Iraq, or the other factors affecting the market.)
To do so takes money. One Hell of a lot of money, and takes operations which ultimately exist on a global scale and together cost more than the military budgets of most, if not all of the nations on the planet combined.
Here, the profits are not entirely allocated into one pocket. They go to shareholders, investors, into R&D next year (because oil companies don't get the job done on credit), acquiring mineral leases, seismic survey data, computer modeling, equipment, and ultimately, into holes in the ground from whence comes the source of next year's profit.
Elsewhere, they go into a national treasury, often at the command of some dictator or monarch.
The 400 million bonus one executive got is unusual, but amounts to a whopping $1.33 for every American if you divvy it up, for a guy who ran an operation that spans the globe.
It may seem like a lot, even so, but this is someone who made decisions which affect the economies of investors, individuals, and nations, which help provide an essential commodity in a rapidly changing and often hostile world, often in spite of the actions and desires of the same people who rely on the commodity. No small task, if you have even an inkling of what is involved in getting that barrel of oil found, produced, transported, refined, and delivered to the gas pump, and certainly far more important in the grand scheme of things than the mediocre musings of Hollywood actors who get 10 million a movie.
As an aside, although I really felt the most important work in the movie industry was Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, no one here decried the profit from the movie, no one here screamed that his 'monopoly' should be regulated, nor even have another tax levied on it for its success. Rather, people here cheered its succcess.
Yet many of those selfsame individuals seem to feel that the companies which provide essential commodities should be further hammered by the selfsame entities which already hamper their operations at every turn and leech mightily off of their success, profiting without risk, in aggregate some five times what the very people who risk capital, life, and limb, to provide those commodities profit at best.
What really needs to get out--and to be stressed is that the selfsame entities which are making the most money are making the rules as well, and blaming the people who are doing the work. Instead of casting impediments in front of the industry, instead of looting the industry of future operating and exploration opportunities and capital, the Government, both State and Federal should be smoothing the way. Instead, they are lying about the situation, using it as an excuse to extract more money from the average American's pocket, and trying to buy votes by ultimately punishing the consumer.
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