the real looting

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Anu

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There ain't no place I'd rather be, baby won't you
Sorry if there's another thread on this.
I think this is the real looting.
Rape the earth, rip off customers, and get PAID!!

OIL FIRMS' PROFITS SOAR TO NEW HIGHS
Exxon Mobil sets record with 75% jump -- analysts blame market factors, not gouging

David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, October 28, 2005


Thanks to two hurricanes and a thirsty world, the oil industry's largest firms are reporting the kind of profits this week that put whole national economies to shame.

Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest publicly traded oil corporation, set a new record Thursday with a $9.9 billion quarterly profit, a 75 percent jump from the same period last year. That broke the previous record set several hours earlier by Royal Dutch Shell, which made $9 billion. San Ramon's Chevron Corp. is due to report its profits today, and another blockbuster is all but assured.

Such a monumental tide of black ink is raising suspicions from Capitol Hill to the corner gas station that the oil giants are taking advantage of supply interruptions to squeeze their customers.

"Sure, we're being gouged," Bruce Williams, 47, of Hercules said as he filled up his Dodge Caravan on Thursday at a San Francisco service station that charged $2.86 for a gallon of regular.

"I don't believe these prices are the truth," he said before glancing at the pump. "I'm at $45, and I'm not filled up yet."

But experts say that big profits are more a reflection of the soaring price of crude oil than of any post-hurricane manipulations.

"The calculation's pretty simple: oil prices are about $40 higher than we thought they'd be back in 2003," said Severin Borenstein, director of the University of California Energy Institute. "That's going to show up in the profits."

The industry's super-sized profits are being matched by staggering sales. Exxon Mobil topped $100 billion in revenue in just three months. Shell fell just shy of $95 billion.

Many countries -- including oil-rich Kuwait, Libya and Qatar -- produce less than $100 billion each year in gross domestic product.

Even for an industry accustomed to spectacular booms and busts, the sheer scale of the current oil boom is hard to fathom.

Crude prices have soared to heights not seen since the oil shocks of the 1970s and early 1980s after adjustment for inflation. Fueled by growing worldwide oil demand, those prices were climbing before hurricanes Katrina and Rita plowed through the Gulf of Mexico's oil wells. Oil prices haven't closed below $60 per barrel since the storms hit. For most of the past two decades, $30 was considered high.

Complaints about gouging have caught the attention of Capitol Hill. Senate Democrats are starting to line up behind a bill to tax the oil companies' "windfall profits," making an exception for any money the firms plow back into finding and tapping new oil fields. Sen. Barbara Boxer voiced her support for it Thursday.

"The facts are clear: Oil companies are making massive profits," she said in a prepared statement. "Our families are hurting. Businesses are hurting. And the economy is in real trouble."

Oil industry analysts, however, say the companies aren't registering radically higher profits since the hurricane.
 
Yeah Anu, right on. Thanks for the article.

Dirty business, evil people engaging in it.
 
whenhiphopdrovethebigcars said:
Yeah Anu, right on. Thanks for the article.

Dirty business, evil people engaging in it.

Oil seems to have replaced tobacco as the most hated industry.

Is everyone that works for an oil company 'evil'?
 
nbcrusader said:
Do you purchase oil based products?

Yes! do you?

Exxon's massive profits equal distaster profiteering and eclipse the most profits made by anyone anywhere at anytime.

At at juncture where the majority of the world's children live in squalor and often sell themselves as slaves, this is, IMHO, a criminal activity.
 
financeguy said:


Is everyone that works for an oil company 'evil'?

Of course. It's even in the job requirements -- "must be evil." :evil:
 
The even have "oil executive initiations" for the new guys where they prove their worth by killing a baby seal and pushing an elderly woman down a flight of stairs.
 
Anu said:


Yes! do you?

Exxon's massive profits equal distaster profiteering and eclipse the most profits made by anyone anywhere at anytime.

At at juncture where the majority of the world's children live in squalor and often sell themselves as slaves, this is, IMHO, a criminal activity.

A profitable business does not equal child slavery.

What, exactly, is the crime you would propose?
 
A guy works many hours at a Mobil gas station in order to make as much money as he can.

An executive uses all the economic strategies he has for Mobil in order to make as much money as he can.


Both are working for this "evil corporation". Both are working to pay for their house, car, raising their family.

The gas station worker is not evil, but the executive is?


Welcome to free market capitalism
 
"oil firm profits soar to new highs"

our demand for oil and related products has soared to new highs.

and if oil companies are overcharging us, it's obviously not any more than we're willing to pay.

I don't know what any of this has to do with child slavery (unless you're suggesting that it's a criminal activity not to give most of your profit to the poor of the world).
 
They own the resources, they spend a lot of money in exploration and extraction, the price of the resource is variable and profit margins are not always skyrocketing.

I do not see anything inherently evil in removing a resource, refining it and selling it.
 
A dog is not a good dog because it is a good barker. A man is not a good man because he is a good talker.

Anu's post is a valid opinion. Just because Anu may have an oil based product does not make him a supporter of the oil industry.
 
Actually, a profit per se is not evil, but ....

If we are going to live under capitalism (I'm anti capitalist) and live under a state (I'm anti-statist), then the government should impose some limits on the companies to benefit the people. So, yes, essentially I am saying, if EXXON and their crooked ilk will not donate massively and appropriately from this windfall, we the people, through our elected government, should take the money and re-distribute the stash.

Profits of this scale at a time like this, if not a punishable crime by an organization like the US govt, a moral and karmic crime.

A multinational corporation is not a small businessman or an entrepreneur.

Finally, oil companies are involved in crimes against the environment and against workers, including slavery.

According to African pro-Democracy activist Chima Ubani regarding Chevron, Shell, et al: "it is the same kind of relationship that the slave masters had with those traditional rulers and local chiefs of that period who actually sold our people into slavery to the European and American slave masters. That is exactly what has happened all over. What we find is that the Nigerian military creates the conducive environment for these multinational companies to come and exploit our people. They impose laws that favor such an exploitation and disempower our people. And most importantly, when our people rise to fight against this exploitation, it is the Nigerian government that uses its own troops to suppress and kill our people for fighting against exploitation by foreign companies"

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4066.htm

http://www.geocities.com/casa_maria_worker/boycott2.html
 
If we are going to live under capitalism (I'm anti capitalist) and live under a state (I'm anti-statist), then the government should impose some limits on the companies to benefit the people. So, yes, essentially I am saying, if EXXON and their crooked ilk will not donate massively and appropriately from this windfall, we the people, through our elected government, should take the money and re-distribute the stash.
So how do you take this money away? What avenue is used?
 
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