he has a point.....

 

Record Sales due to higher demand... I think you meant profits, the fact is, Walmart makes a greater profit than any single Oil and/or gas company.

Noone gripes about that because you can buy cotton balls for $0.99 and gas is $4.00/Gallon?!?!

Again, for the second time, Chevron, Shell, and most other companies have no control over the price of the fuel they sell. They all import oil from overseas, what they want to charge, the gas companies have to pay, and then pass the cost down to us. That is the issue with supply and demand. Same thing as if raw steel becomes more expensive because China is importing so much of it, anything we make of steel gets more expensive. The oil companies cant just eat the cost either. So everyone needs to stop grilling the C.E.O's of oil companies, and get after the people that are producing and selling the stuff!

As for the "record profits," the companies are selling more fuel than ever before. So lets think about this, if a company sells 400 units for 10 years straight and profit $100,000 per year; and all of a sudden they start selling 600 units for the next two years and they make $150,000, that is classified as a record profit!

The more you sell, the more you profit, kind of obvious.

It is funny how the people that gripe the most about the issue, know the least about it.

You know what, even the companies that sell it, still have to pay for it, when I fill up my company pick-up for $80.00 every morning, I dont have a discount card. It hurts us as business' also, and we are the ones trying to produce it from American soil and reduce the dependency on foreign oil.

As for the Anti-republican comment; I said earlier in the post; if e get a democrat in office that feels the same way that most of you do, there ill be hundreds of thousands of people that work in the industry that are out of work. Just in America. you want to talk about problems with the American economy, lay off that number of people and see what happens.

I am not trying to start a fight, I am trying to shed light on the issue.

So honestly, your expertise is in plane repairing, and maybe you ought to focus this kind of energy on your job, and I will continue to focus on my job, and try to help the American economy.

Dustin

 

Ahh, a conehead! I'm an AMT at DAL. They don't let us get too deep into the avionics, usually just change defective components and send the bad ones to the conehead's secret lair for repair. Engine troubleshooting is my gig. Mostly we address performance related issues; trend shifts, H.O.C.s, fuel scheduling issues, etc.

 

ahh the lovely life of Box swapping lol.

Oh and I was refering to the people selling oil at the heart not the gas stations we get gas at, sorry if I wasnt clear. And the record sales were US ones not global since you have countries like China using so much more now. And "supposely" they are not selling more because they stress that their oil refineries are at maxium out-put per day. That profit is from increase prices that dont totally mirror demand/weak dollar. An yes I know its not my expertise but its a realky big problem in this world that most arent it concerned about (figuring we will never run out of oil in our life time). So I just wanted to bitch about it for awhile. Hopefully someone here has a better knowlegde on this than me and can correct me when needed (I noticed you didnt disagree about the EM1 thing etc---just an example) so my information can grow and my next argument be better.

 

Yeah, it's not very challenging when the problem just requires a new EEC or the like. Fortunately (for the sake of an interesting job at least), most of the issues we address are more involved than that.

 

Oil companies are not the culprits here. Politicians have made it very diificult to first drill for oil and second build refineries. I was party to opposing the environmentalists and politicians wanting 'contributions' who thwarted the needs for more oil wells and refineries. We now pay the price for not having supply keep up with demand; unfortunately catching up will take a decade so I don't see relief any time soon.
BTW, has anyone checked the profit margins of Coke and Pepsi lately? The volume of profits need to be checked against total sales. Any company that shows a profit of only 4% after taxes will show a very big profit on 40 billion dollars in sales. (1.6 billion. or 1,600 million). I don't agree that the president of an oil company should make 75 million; but the 90% tax on income over 1 million was rescended 2 decades ago so industry could buy politicians - and politicians get big campaign contributions.
And for the speculators: they are almost unamimously betting crude prices will go higher. We are all looking at the steep increase in crude needs of China and India as they ramp up supplying the USA with products we order from them and lay off workers that cost more than Chinese peasants and Indian lower classes.
And last, unfortunatey we are not going to see government bureaucrats cut back to mirror taxpapers loss of buyimg power. We will bear the brunt of politicians not cutting back taxes and gas prices too.
And as for diesels the cost of additional processing diesel fuel to low-sulfur content is pretty much the reason diesel fuel costs so much. And of course you don't have to figure much to see where the low sulfur requirement came from but in this case it may be good regulation.

 

And I am talking about sales at refineries, where the fuels are stripped from the oil and then piped or trucked out to their destinations.

Record sales, how many diesels alone have been produced and sold in the last 5 years compared to years past. There is a diesel truck/performance boom right now, and guess what, a ton more diesel has been sold now that not just 18 wheelers are using it.

Maximum output per day also has to do with intake of raw materials. the plants may be bogged down, but again, as you DONT know, when your inlet has insufficient volume, your pumps are working twice as hard to output half as much. If I have a typical 350 v8 NGSG Screw compressor on a natural gas well, with a 25# suction pressure, and am trying to buck up to a 150# line pressure, my compression ratio is 5:1, now if my suction pressure is 100#'s, it is 1.5:1; I can obviously move a lot more volume without stressing out the compressor as much.

Not totally mirroring one another. Prices have to go up to reflect the cost that the company is incurring themselves. As I said before, we are paying the prices also, which makes operations a lot more expensive. Everyone is having to spend more of their profits due to higher fuel, so they bump up their prices to cover their own costs.

For that matter, A barrell of oil used to be $30 when gas was $1.25/gallon, it is nearly 4.5 times that now! $133/bbl last I saw? So take the $1.25/gl and times it by 4.5 and that is $5.63/gl. Maybe you are right, and they are not mirroring each other, but it is to our benefit.

We may never run out, or we just might. All of these products are fossil fuels, they are all naturally created, as we speak, there are more decaying fossils, emitting more natural resources all of the time. Have you ever heard of the Piceance basin in Colorado? There is a gas boom there right now, a rig drilling on every 2 acres I believe? They say there are almost as many rigs as there are trees in spots. they are even drilling on mountains above the cloud lines. If the government would let us drill oil like that, we wouldnt be having such a "crisis"

I didnt disagree with the other things you posted, because frankly I dont care about electric cars etc. I am standing up for the truth of the matter, and when people making an honest living are getting treated like dirt because of heresay, that is when I voice my opinion. Saying that the rich get richer and that bs, (I know those werent your exact words, but it all falls into the same category) I get upset. I do think that people who have done well for themselves should be better off than someone collecting government money because they "cant" get a job. I do feel that I should have better health care than whats his name down the street, because I PAY FOR MINE and he gets his for free from the government? Why dont we focus on our national debt, and make our money worth something before we are in real trouble. Pretty soon, foreign oil will be $200/bbl not because they raised the prices, but because our dollar isnt worth anything, and it will take more of them to buy the same stuff we were getting at $133/bbl.

Dustin

 

Thank you, maybe someone will listen to you, because they sure arent listening to me. I stated that Wal-Mart has greater profits than any oil or gas company, and noone responded to that.

I am glad someone else can know facts and not be so gullible as to accept every word that the nightly news shoves down their throats.

Thanks again!

Dustin

 

I agree with you to a certain extent about **** you oil companies, but you also have to keep in mind, North America uses A TON of oil period.
How is plastic made? What about nylon? etc, etc...

Check it out
Petroleum Based Components Used in Products You Never Realized

We are heavy consumers of the stuff, we're using it up extremely fast, so there's a price for that.

A better site with a list of all the things we use that is petroleum based
Petroleum Based Products: A Long List: Save and Conserve

 

Ok, now that i thought about it, especially with all the thought put into this thread, there is an obvious winner (at least in my perspective):

 

This comin' from a 15 year old who doesn't drive to begin with...

 

Yeah i know riding bike everywhere isnt fun, especially here in Miami where it gets like a bagillion degrees with like 400% humidity. Yet, for the people who this may apply to, it would work. im just trying to throw something out there.

 

Looking back at this thread and some other editorials and other articles, cars are really not the only things that are contributing to bad gas prices. many of the objects that we take for granted are made from petroleum. Not to mention that planes also use petroleum (sorta), and they are much less efficient than cars. Im stuck.

I truly think that no one does care anymore. Im sad.

 

Same here, I'm buying only $20 of gas a week (5 gallons) because I don't drive much anymore. I don't think it's going to go down since demand will increase with population. Just think about it. More people = more food needed = farmers need to produce more = more oil used to transport food. Well, if it makes you happier, I haven't finished the 5 gallon and it's one day past a week.

I actually went 2 weeks on one tank before.