Posted on 07/02/2008 6:42:11 AM PDT by GQuagmire
NOTWITHSTANDING a shift by big business to become more socially responsible, Big Oil prides itself in being an island of bullheadedness and smugness.
In a capitalist system, rewards of success go to shareholders. But Big Oil has virtually ignored an equally important constituency - the citizens of the United States - who have granted Big Oil the right to extract the nation's most strategic natural resources. In return, they expect them to act as responsible fiduciaries
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Just another state socialist rant from a trust fund baby and his sidekick.
I appologize for the redundancy.
Yup, I’m going to take advice about honest business from a Kennedy. The only Kennedy that even tried business was the crook rumrunner Ambassador Kennedy. After that, all the kids and grandkids have done nothing whilst living on the ill-gotten monies whilst fooling themselves into thinking they’re doing “public service”. What a bunch of loons.
Use your own oil from Mokeen and Kenoil Dumbass.
These types of ideas- government intervention into “strategic” industries to decide what level of profit is “fair” — should send shivers down the spines of everyone. They want to socialize healthcare and energy. It will only be a matter of time before they go after other industries like pharma, groceries, multifamily, etc.
Truly ominous times we currently live.
Here is a little background on Little Joe and his mentor, Hugo Chavez and oil.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=326F8C57-1DCD-4BE3-B18C-6556B4ADDF74
I am well aware of Comrade Joe’s pimping for HC.
every Nov. to March all I see on TV is him spouting off about this.I go through about 10 sets of batteries a winter changing channels to get away from his bleatings
I can tell you with certainty that “Big Oil” is NOT going to do the right thing as long as Congress has laws preventing Big Oil from doing the right thing.
What we need is for Congress to do the right thing. But I would not hold my breath. It’s Congress that created this mess to begin with.
I saw Joe Kennedy and thought immediately of the bootlegger and German sympathizer. Didn’t know there was a Joe Jr. But it doesn’t surprise me. The Kennedys reproduce like rats.
But I guess that makes up for the high attrition rate in the clan in later life due to various factors.
Yo, Squeaky. Big oil has done a hell of a lot more for me than you Kennedys ever could.
Kennedy is an idiot. (It doesn’t matter which Kennedy I am referring to!)
For those who are too stupid to understand economic issues about “Big Oil” - let’s try to give a few points to consider:
1. There is oil in the ground, but it is hard to get out, and there is risk in trying to do so. It is very expensive to drill wells.
2. States and the US Government could opt to set up their own “corporation” to drill oil, and they could sell it (or they could build their own refineries and try to compete with big business, but they would be assuming all the risks, and the costs that go with them.
3. States and the US Government make much more money that big oil does, and they do it in a nearly risk-free environment. They lease lands (or off-shore areas) for big money (auctioned to highest bidder), and the oil companies must win the auction and then spend more money to determine if and where the oil is, and if the risk of drilling a well is worth the investment. If the oil company does’t drill wells and start paying royalties on every barrel pumped out of the ground, the leases expire and revert to the state. If the oil companies DO develop wells in the lease area, they must now pay royalties on all the oil pumped out.
4. In the mean time, the governments merely tack on taxes to the finished product, and make more in taxes than the business makes in profit.
5. The stupid (or evil) politicians decry the “excess profits” - but their socialist attack is focused only on the oil companies. Why not excess profit taxes on Big Software Companies, Big Banks, or Big College Text Book publishing companies - all who make more profit (as a percentage of sales and infrastructure investments) than the oil companies.
So - I would love to see Joe Kennedy invest his family fortune in creating the “Kennedy Oil company” - and let him take the risks and still turn a profit (but take the smaller profit that he thinks that the big oil companies should limit themselves to ....)
There is more, but this is the general idea.
And let’s remember a few other basic things also -
a. The government has sold leases, and then refused to allow the oil companies to drill in the lease area (i.e. -they reneged on their contract.)
b. The government, through the courts, will, from time to time, engage in litigious activities against the oil companies, deciding that their hiring/firing practices are illegal, or their previous actions years ago violated certain standards that didn’t exist when the actions were done, and the oil company must charge a reasonable extra profit to cover the risk of litigation and run-away jury awards. (Think of the Exxon Valdez incident, where corporations that fire alcoholics can be sued for treating their “disease” as something other than a sickness, but then Exxon faces the risks of allowing Joe Hazelwood to continue in his job ..... and punitive damages that far exceed reasonable costs are a part of risk that must be planned for. Think of the company that had a drilling station in the arctic - where they fired 3 people that they had conclusive proof that the 3 were using drugs. A 3 judge panel affirmed a lower court decision that the firing was improper, and awarded big fines to the 3 individuals. The dissenting judge said that the courts sent a strong message to companies - “sued if you do, sued if you don’t” - because if the company had failed to fire the 3, and then there had been an accident that contaminated areas of the arctic, the company would have been held negligent for retaining the individuals, but the company was being held to an impossibly high standard with respect to hiring & firing, evidentiary rules, etc. that would make it impossible to fire anyone.
Businesses take the risks, and are entitled to a reasonable profit. Those that disagree can invest their own money and create an alternate business and then sell their product or services for less and undercut the “big bad businesses” ...that is the American Way!!
Yeah, it matters what Kennedy you refer to. Rosemary was the smart one.
I feel the urge to buy Jow a hydrogen powered limousine...convertible.
Isn’t this the weasel who is a friend of Hugo Chavez? He must have a pecuniary interest in beating up on U.S. oil companies. We need to stop running the country for wealthy elitist crooks and start running it for the public.
“Just another state socialist rant from a trust fund baby and his sidekick.”
Not only is he a trust fund baby. The Robber Barron Kennedy’s signed tons of oil rights contracts in the South and every Kennedy gets royalties annually from these cheap leases. The more Joe can limit supply, the more they make.
Remember the stories of the Kennedy’s owning a lot of slum housing and then voting for housing support for the poor? I never knew if that was true but the oil story is.
Pitiful, Joe.
Of course the Rats had not a thing to do with this oil problem. What a big crock of BS from liberal land.
The pity is that 99% of the American idiots otherwise known as voters believe this bull shit.
What the oil companies and the cigarette makers also is to call a press conference. At the press conference the presidents of the companies should state, “Since we are considered to be the most vile entities in the universe by most, we intend to make amends. AS we speak, out mechanics and technicians are destroying the technical equipment used in our refineries and plants to make our products. While they are doing that, our accountment departments are paying our employees in full and terminating their services. And the disabled equipment, tanks, piping, andother misc. equipment will be sold for scrap. This concludes our press conference. Have a nice day.”
Bill Phillips spent nearly 50 years in the US oil and gas industry; most of his career was with the Phillips Petroleum Company. Bill is a descendant of Frank Phillips. Frank
Phillips, along with his brother Lee Eldas (L.E.) Phillips, Sr., founded the original Phillips Petroleum Company in 1917 in Bartlesville, OK. Do you remember Phillips 66 gas
stations? Phillips Petroleum Company merged with Conoco, Inc. in 2002 to form the current ConocoPhillips oil company.
So, when Bill talks about oil and gas issues, I tend to listen - very closely. I think that you will find Bill’s thoughts and facts very revealing, very compelling and very difficult to argue with. As you prepare to cast your crucial ballots this Fall, please think long and hard about the far-reaching, cumulative effects of the US political philosophies, policies and
legislation that have contributed to ! the cur rent and future US oil supply situation.
May 28, 2008,”Big Oil”
Did you know that the United States does NOT have any big oil companies. It’s true: the largest American oil company, Exxon Mobil, is only the 14th largest in the world, and is dwarfed by the really big oil companies—all owned by foreign governments or government-sponsored monopolies—that dominate the world’s oil supply. This graph below tells the story; you can barely see the American oil companies as minor players on the right side of the chart in gray. The chart was presented to the House committee last week by Chevron. With 94% of the world’s oil supply locked up by foreign governments, most of which are hostile to the United States, the relatively puny American oil companies do not have access to enough crude oil to significantly affect the market and help bring prices down. Thus, ExxonMobil, a “small” oil company, buys 90% of the crude oil that it re fines for the U.S. market from the big players, i.e, mostly-hostile foreign governments. The price at the U.S. pump is rising because the price the big oil companies charge ExxonMobil and the other small American companies for crude oil is going up as the value of the American dollar goes down. They will eventually bleed this country into printing even more money and we will go into runway inflation once again as we did under the Carter Democratic reign. This is obviously a tough situation for the American consumer. The irony is that it doesn’t have to be that way. The United States—unlike, say, France—actually has vast petroleum reserves. It would be possible for American oil companies to develop those reserves, play a far bigger role in international markets, and deliver gas at the pump to American consumers at a much lower price, while creating many thousands of jobs for Americans. This would be infinitely preferable to! shipping endless billions of dollars to Saudi Arabia, Russia and Venezuela to be used in propping up their economies. So, why doesn’t it happen? Because the Democrat Party—aided, sadly, by a handful of Republicans—deliberately keeps gas prices high and our domestic oil companies small by putting most of our reserves off limits to development. China is now drilling in the Caribbean, off Cuba but our own companies are barred by law from developing large oil fields off the coasts off Florida and California. Enormous oil-shale deposits in the Rocky Mountain states could go a long way toward supplying American consumers’ needs, but the Democratic Congress won’t allow those resources to be developed. ANWR contains vast petroleum reserves, but we don’t know how vast, because Congress, not wanting the American people to know how badly its policies are hurting our economy, has made it illegal to explore and map those reserves, let alo! ne deve lop them. In short, all Americans are paying a terrible price for the Democratic Party’s perverse energy policies. I own some small interests in tiny, 4 barrel-per-day oil wells in Wyoming. We have 14 agencies that have iron-hand jurisdiction over us. If we drop any oil on the ground when the refinery truck comes to pick up oil from our holding tanks, we are fined. Yet down the road the state will spray thousands of gallons of used oil on a dirt road to control dirt. When it rains that oil runs into rivers and creeks. Yet a cup of oil on the ground at our wellhead is a $50,000 EPA fine plus additional fines from state regulating agencies. They treat oil as if it were plutonium that has the potential to leak into the environment. We are fined if our dirt burms are not high enough around a holding tank, yet the truck that picks up our oil runs down the road at 60 mph with no burm around i! t. Peop le wonder why there is no more exploration in this country. It’s because of the regulators; people who have lived their whole lives doing nothing but imposing fines on small operators like us for doing mostly nothing. So, America enjoy your $4.00 per gallon gasoline. Your dollar is now worth 0.62 Euro-Cents. The lack of American production of GNP, the massive trade deficit (as labor markets have moved overseas to fight insanely high union imposed labor costs in America) and the run away printing of money (backed by nothing of value here in America) has caused the dollar to become more worthless on the international market. And that’s where our oil comes from. It’s paid for with dollars that become more worthless everyday. If we had just kept par with the Euro we’d be paying $62 dollars per barrel for oil (42 gallons) or about $1.50 instead of $2.50 a gallon for crude oil. What the US government also does not tell you is that! It is the leaseholder and royalty recipient of most oil production and receives 25% of the gross oil sales before we pay for electricity to lift the oil, propane to keep the oil-water separators from freezing in the winters. We pay a pumper to visit each well everyday plus we have equipment failures all the time. We pay for that out of our 75% of gross sales. The government does not share in any expenses to run any production well. So, if the Big Oil Companies are making record profits, then so is the federal government from it’s 25% tax on every molecule of oil sold to a refinery in this country. Why isn’t the government on the stand for “Record” profits? What you don’t see is this 25% of the sales price of crude oil being siphoned away by the government. That money plus the road taxes, state taxes, etc. amounts to over $1 per gallon of gasoline you are buying while the governments only admit to about 50 cents per gallon. To ! all you Democrats, when you go vote for your candidate, a blazing liberal like Barrack Hussein Obama or Hillary Clinton, just keep in mind that their liberal spending habits will further decrease the value of the American dollar on the world market and your gasoline costs will hike even higher. As they introduce more give-away programs, raise taxes on everyone to pay people not to produce or work, your dollar will continue to dwindle on the world market and you will be paying $10.00 per gallon at the next election. Cheap hydrocarbon fuel is all over. Enjoy! Enjoy the fruits of your decision to elect these folks when you are there in that voting booth and you stab your pin through a Democrat’s name.
William “Bill” Phillips
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