gas company profits

[Frankie]

For those who claim these high gas prices are justified by bashing the EPA and moaning about refining capacity:

"May, 2004-
The first quarter profits for the big oil companies were recently released. What a shock - the refining and marketing profits of the big four oil companies have increased by a staggering amount over one year ago!

BP – up 165%
Chevron-Texaco - up 294%
Conoco-Phillips - up 44%
ExxonMobil - up 125%"

Consumer's Union October '04 - " U.S. oil companies' profits for the first nine months of this year have increased by more than 35 percent over last year, with the bulk of those profits coming from charges for domestic oil and gas refining, not from higher crude oil prices, consumer groups say.
Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union say the record profits, coupled with the Department of Energy's latest report that heating oil prices have hit a new record --$2.06 per gallon --are a clear indication that oil companies are profiting at the expense of American consumers.
"After analyzing the most recent quarterly statements of the domestic U.S. oil industry, it is not only clear that profits have climbed to record levels, but that the major source of those profit increases is the jump in domestic refining and marketing margins," said Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America. "Well over half of that increase in profits has come not from crude oil, but from profits on domestic U.S. refining and marketing."

ABC News April '05 – "As American consumers increasingly feel the pinch at the pump, oil companies have watched their profits soar.
The newest numbers from the second quarter of this year show Exxon Mobil with a 32 percent increase in earnings over this time last year — that's more than $7.6 billion.
BP saw a profit increase of 38 percent, totaling $6.7 billion, while Conoco Phillips — the third largest oil company in the country — recorded a 56 percent increase in profit, more than $3 billion.
"The huge profits are enormous because the public is drastically overpaying what it costs to produce," said Joan Claybrook, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.
Many of these companies long ago bought oil reserves at prices of $10 to $25 a barrel. With prices peaking near the $67 mark, the profit margin has been enormous.
Even more eye-opening is the profit in Saudi Arabia. Saudis are making an average of $208 million more each day since the increase in crude oil prices first began in December 2003."

We're being gouged at the pump, people, and don't let anyone tell you differently. The proof is in the profits as reported by the oil companies, themselves.

 

[Campground Cattle]

For those who claim these high gas prices are justified by bashing the EPA and moaning about refining capacity:

"May, 2004-
The first quarter profits for the big oil companies were recently released. What a shock - the refining and marketing profits of the big four oil companies have increased by a staggering amount over one year ago!

BP – up 165%
Chevron-Texaco - up 294%
Conoco-Phillips - up 44%
ExxonMobil - up 125%"

Consumer's Union October '04 - " U.S. oil companies' profits for the first nine months of this year have increased by more than 35 percent over last year, with the bulk of those profits coming from charges for domestic oil and gas refining, not from higher crude oil prices, consumer groups say.
Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union say the record profits, coupled with the Department of Energy's latest report that heating oil prices have hit a new record --$2.06 per gallon --are a clear indication that oil companies are profiting at the expense of American consumers.
"After analyzing the most recent quarterly statements of the domestic U.S. oil industry, it is not only clear that profits have climbed to record levels, but that the major source of those profit increases is the jump in domestic refining and marketing margins," said Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America. "Well over half of that increase in profits has come not from crude oil, but from profits on domestic U.S. refining and marketing."

ABC News April '05 – "As American consumers increasingly feel the pinch at the pump, oil companies have watched their profits soar.
The newest numbers from the second quarter of this year show Exxon Mobil with a 32 percent increase in earnings over this time last year — that's more than $7.6 billion.
BP saw a profit increase of 38 percent, totaling $6.7 billion, while Conoco Phillips — the third largest oil company in the country — recorded a 56 percent increase in profit, more than $3 billion.
"The huge profits are enormous because the public is drastically overpaying what it costs to produce," said Joan Claybrook, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.
Many of these companies long ago bought oil reserves at prices of $10 to $25 a barrel. With prices peaking near the $67 mark, the profit margin has been enormous.
Even more eye-opening is the profit in Saudi Arabia. Saudis are making an average of $208 million more each day since the increase in crude oil prices first began in December 2003."

We're being gouged at the pump, people, and don't let anyone tell you differently. The proof is in the profits as reported by the oil companies, themselves.

Again you are so stupid oil prices are driven by the commodities market and speculators. You have an oil well that was drilled for 20 bucks a barrel and now oil is selling for 70 so you are going to sell your oil for 20, Yeah right I bet thats the same way you sell Angus huh. Do you know anything of economics.
Second its great they are making money as it is incentive to build refining which will drive the price back down. The industry shutdown vast amounts of refineries because they were not profitable to upgrade to EPA standards.

 

[Campground Cattle]

US refining capacity bottleneck boosts oil prices
By Finfacts Team
Aug 29, 2005, 12:15



Valero Energy Corporation is a Fortune 500 company based in San Antonio with approximately 20,000 employees and annual revenues of $55 billion. One of the top U.S. refining companies, Valero has an extensive refining system with a throughput capacity of approximately 2.5 million barrels per day. The company's geographically diverse refining network stretches from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast and West Coast to the Caribbean.
There hasn't been a new oil refinery built in America since 1976 and with existing plants working close to capacity, even a minor outage in a plant can impact the price of oil.

A combination of tight environmental restrictions, not-in-my-back-yard community opposition, and the high cost of new construction has been an impediment to additional capacity.

A new refinery would cost about $3 billion and refining margins have traditionally been much tighter than on the crude production side.
The recently passed Energy Bill omits limited liability protection for MTBE, a petrol additive that pollutes groundwater. Valero, the largest American oil refining group, has announced that it plans to stop producing the additive in 2006 when the new law goes into effect. The loss of 60,000 barrels of petrol per day, will be coumpounded, if other refiners follow suit.

The combination of limited spare crude production capacity and oil refining capacity will continue to bolster prices.

US Energy Information Administration detail on Oil Refining:

U.S. refining capacity, as measured by daily processing capacity of crude oil distillation units alone, has appeared relatively stable in recent years, at about 16 million barrels per day of operable capacity (graph). While the level is a reduction from the capacity of twenty years ago, the first refineries that were shut down as demand fell in the early 1980's were those that had little downstream processing capability. Limited to simple distillation, these small facilities were only economically viable while receiving subsidies under the Federal price control system that ended in 1981. Some additional refineries were shut down in the late 1980's and during the 1990's, always, of course, those at the least profitable end of a company's asset portfolio. At the same time, refiners improved the efficiency of the crude oil distillation units that remained in service by "debottlenecking" to improve the flow and to match capacity among different units and by turning more and more to computer control of the processing.


Furthermore, following government mandates for environmentally more benign products as well as commercial economics, refiners enhanced their upgrading (downstream processing) capacity. As a result, the capacity of the downstream units ceased to be the constraining factor on the amount of crude oil processed (or "run") through the crude oil distillation system. Thus crude oil inputs to refineries ("runs") have continued to rise, and along with them -- given the stability of crude oil distillation capacity -- capacity "utilization" rose throughout much of the 1990's (again, see graph). Utilization -- the share of capacity filled with crude oil -- reached truly record levels in the last half of the decade, nominally exceeding 100 percent for brief periods.

Top World Oil Consumers, 2004*


Country
Total Oil Consumption
(million barrels per day)

1) United States 20.7

2) China 6.5

3) Japan 5.4

4) Germany 2.6

5) Russia 2.6

6) India 2.3

7) Canada 2.3

8) Brazil 2.2

9) South Korea 2.1

10) France 2.0

11) Mexico 2.0

*Table includes all countries that consumed more
than 2 million bbl/d in 2004.


As with most aspects of the U.S. oil industry, the Gulf Coast is by far the leader in refinery capacity, with more than twice the crude oil distillation capacity as any other United States region. (The difference is even greater for downstream processing capacity, because the Gulf Coast has the highest concentration of sophisticated facilities in the world.) As discussed in the section on Trade, the Gulf Coast is the nation's leading supplier in refined products as in crude oil. It ships refined product to both the East Coast (supplying more than half of that region's needs for light products like gasoline, heating oil, diesel, and jet fuel) and to the Midwest (supplying more than 20 percent of the region's light product consumption.)

There are seasonal patterns in refinery input. In the United States, refinery runs mirror the overall demand for products -- lower in the colder months and higher in the warmer months. In addition, as they move out of the gasoline season in the early autumn and then as they move into the next gasoline season in the late winter, refiners routinely perform maintenance. The duration and depth of the cutback in refining activity during each maintenance season is affected by a variety of factors, including the relative strength of the market for refined products. Therefore, when stocks are high and demand slack, the refinery maintenance season is likely to be longer and deeper. Refinery activity will also respond to the market's need (and hence relative prices) for product, with changes in the level of crude oil throughput as well as emphasis on one product over another.

World Refining Capacity

Broadly speaking, refining developed in consuming areas, because it was cheaper to move crude oil than to move product. Furthermore, the proximity to consuming markets made it easier to respond to weather-induced spikes in demand or to gauge seasonal shifts. Thus, while the Mideast is the largest producing region, the bulk of refining takes place in the United States, Europe or Asia.

 

[memanpa]

not even getting in this one

 

[ollie]

Again you are so stupid

Campground there is not need in that. She obviously isn't stupid. She is quite bright. In this case I would say it is quite likely that the old contracts for oil are still in effect and they are buying alot of domestic oil way below market value. The place she missed it in my opinion is that Exxon is wrong for not raising their price paid to the producer. If it went down I would expect them to stick to the deal . A contract is a contract.

 

[J]

I was interrested until I saw that ABC News was quoted as a source for Frankie's arguement. I can't stress it enough, that the liberally biased media is not a good place to get your information. Especially if you plan to intellegently discuss the point with someone.

 

[Capt Call]

Again you are so stupid

Campground there is not need in that. She obviously isn't stupid. She is quite bright. In this case I would say it is quite likely that the old contracts for oil are still in effect and they are buying alot of domestic oil way below market value. The place she missed it in my opinion is that Exxon is wrong for not raising their price paid to the producer. If it went down I would expect them to stick to the deal . A contract is a contract.

Ollie I don't post often but I have to agree with Mr. Camp on this one.
Mrs Frankie please list the one or two fields you do not consider yourself an expert.
Ollie, Mrs. Frankie has never posted anything that she wasn't personally attacking someone in a coy manner.

 

[ollie]

personally attacking someone in a coy manner.

I respectfully disagree. All of us who have strong convictions try hard to convince others we are right. She is OK by me. So is Camp.

 

[Caustic Burno]

personally attacking someone in a coy manner.

I respectfully disagree. All of us who have strong convictions try hard to convince others we are right. She is OK by me. So is Camp.

Ollie I got to call a spade a spade here Camp has been telling us the EPA is a major problem.
The head of the EPA was on national TV removing the gasoline regulations so refineries can make more.
Looks to me Frankie threw the first rock here and was trying to get the members to believe lies.
Strong convictions is great but but posting false information is another.

 

[dj]

Camp is there a law or rule that says no new refinerys can be built?


Frankie are you not getting record profits from your product?

Thank you for past posts and responses. In this thread and others. Both parties have provided food for thought.

 

[TXBobcat]

If we lifted all the regulations (permanantely) that were put in place by the EPA for the last 20 years or so, would that make
it easier to refine/produce more gasoline/diesel? Wouldn't it also encourage more investment in building new refineries?

If so, I don't understand why the President or Congress doesn't push for this. :?:

 

[Frankie]

personally attacking someone in a coy manner.

I respectfully disagree. All of us who have strong convictions try hard to convince others we are right. She is OK by me. So is Camp.

Ollie I got to call a spade a spade here Camp has been telling us the EPA is a major problem.
The head of the EPA was on national TV removing the gasoline regulations so refineries can make more.
Looks to me Frankie threw the first rock here and was trying to get the members to believe lies.
Strong convictions is great but but posting false information is another.

Where have I posted lies or false information? I posted the profits for oil companies. Do you have any numbers to contridict those figures?

 

[Caustic Burno]

For those who claim these high gas prices are justified by bashing the EPA and moaning about refining capacity: Just one of your attempt to discredit someone.

In my opinon you are lower than a snakes belly in a wagon rut JMO.

 

[Frankie]

Camp is there a law or rule that says no new refinerys can be built?


Frankie are you not getting record profits from your product?

Thank you for past posts and responses. In this thread and others. Both parties have provided food for thought.

Yes, I'm doing very well selling Angus cattle. But when someone thinks my cattle are too expensive, I'm happy to give him the name of other breeders in my area to check out. If I pull into a Kerr-McGee station and the gas is too high, I can drive to Conoco, but the gas will be the same price, and the same is true at every gas station. I can remember when gas prices weren't the same from station to station.

There's no law against building refineries in the US. They are expensive to build and most communities don't want one in their area. Environmental impact statements are expensive. When the oil companies think it will be profitable, they'll build one. But for the last several years it's been cheaper for them, and us, to import a lot of gasoline into the US.

 

[Frankie]

cc said:

There hasn't been a new oil refinery built in America since 1976 and with existing plants working close to capacity, even a minor outage in a plant can impact the price of oil.

And he's completely right. We had exactly the same refining capacity two years ago when gas was $1.30 a gallon as we had last week when it was $2.59. Yet he will continually blame the price of gasoline on a lack of refining capacity in the US! I don't remember exactly, but the price of oil makes up about 75% of the price of gasoline. If we had fifteen more refineries, oil would still be $65+ a barrel. Oil prices are what's driving the cost of gasline and it's killing our economy. Look at the profits oil companies are making. CC doesn't seem to want to discuss those profits, he just want's to call me names.

As for the EPA: I live in oildfield company. Earle P. Halliburton started Halliburton Oilfield Services right here. My Dad supported his family as a pipeline welder for Koch. He was not an educated man, but he loved the outdoors. Other than his family, nothing made him happier than a shotgun and a good bird dog. I remember plenty of nights that he came home wet and covered in oil from repairing a pipeline leaking into a creek. It bothered him a lot because he understood the damage that oil was going to cause. If he knew the people who had cattle down creek from the leak, he'd try to get in touch with them and tell them about the leak. The oil company had absolutely no responsibility to clean up the oil. As the pipelines got old, they just abandoned them. They didn't have to empty them either. My little 99 lb. aunt spent fifteen years hauling drinking water for her family because the oil companies had polluted their water well. Somewhere along the line, our government started making various industries accountable for the damage they were doing to our lands. If not for that, much of this country wouldn't be fit to live in. There are patches of land that are just dead from oil and chemical spills. The independent oil producers here in OK have been, on their own initiative, repairing environmental damage from past years and I salute them for it. But I don't for an instant think they would be doing it if they didn't think an EPA mandated program would cost them more. I don't doubt the EPA, like any government agency, makes mistakes and goes too far sometimes, but I'm grateful to them for what they've done in this area of Oklahoma.

 

[Frankie]

For those who claim these high gas prices are justified by bashing the EPA and moaning about refining capacity: Just one of your attempt to discredit someone.

In my opinon you are lower than a snakes belly in a wagon rut JMO.

"Discrediting someone?" You said I posted false information. Show me where I posted false information or we'll know who is trying to discredit someone. As for you opinion: :roll:

 

[Tod Dague]

I don't know much about the oil business but I do know a little about supply and demand and the market. The price of oil is a large part the problem with gas and diesel prices. The demand for oil has gone up a good bit world wide in the last couple of years. Oil is truly a world market and prices are up world wide not just in the US. I personally believe that oil prices are artificially driven higher by the futures buyers just like the teck boom a few years ago. As any market begins to rise a lot of people will tend to jump in and create a sellers market driving the price higher and higher until there is a correction. If I owned oil futures I would be selling about now. I might not be selling at the top dollar but the people who do hold on till the top dollar typically sell after the correction.

 

[Tod Dague]

For those who claim these high gas prices are justified by bashing the EPA and moaning about refining capacity:

"May, 2004-
The first quarter profits for the big oil companies were recently released. What a shock - the refining and marketing profits of the big four oil companies have increased by a staggering amount over one year ago!

BP – up 165%
Chevron-Texaco - up 294%
Conoco-Phillips - up 44%
ExxonMobil - up 125%"

Consumer's Union October '04 - " U.S. oil companies' profits for the first nine months of this year have increased by more than 35 percent over last year, with the bulk of those profits coming from charges for domestic oil and gas refining, not from higher crude oil prices, consumer groups say.
Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union say the record profits, coupled with the Department of Energy's latest report that heating oil prices have hit a new record --$2.06 per gallon --are a clear indication that oil companies are profiting at the expense of American consumers.
"After analyzing the most recent quarterly statements of the domestic U.S. oil industry, it is not only clear that profits have climbed to record levels, but that the major source of those profit increases is the jump in domestic refining and marketing margins," said Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America. "Well over half of that increase in profits has come not from crude oil, but from profits on domestic U.S. refining and marketing."

ABC News April '05 – "As American consumers increasingly feel the pinch at the pump, oil companies have watched their profits soar.
The newest numbers from the second quarter of this year show Exxon Mobil with a 32 percent increase in earnings over this time last year — that's more than $7.6 billion.
BP saw a profit increase of 38 percent, totaling $6.7 billion, while Conoco Phillips — the third largest oil company in the country — recorded a 56 percent increase in profit, more than $3 billion.
"The huge profits are enormous because the public is drastically overpaying what it costs to produce," said Joan Claybrook, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.
Many of these companies long ago bought oil reserves at prices of $10 to $25 a barrel. With prices peaking near the $67 mark, the profit margin has been enormous.
Even more eye-opening is the profit in Saudi Arabia. Saudis are making an average of $208 million more each day since the increase in crude oil prices first began in December 2003."

We're being gouged at the pump, people, and don't let anyone tell you differently. The proof is in the profits as reported by the oil companies, themselves.

Oil companies own oil. If they are smart they are selling their oil futures as the price climbs. This is most likely where they are making the majority of there profits not in the production of fuel.

 

[Campground Cattle]

For those who claim these high gas prices are justified by bashing the EPA and moaning about refining capacity:

"May, 2004-
The first quarter profits for the big oil companies were recently released. What a shock - the refining and marketing profits of the big four oil companies have increased by a staggering amount over one year ago!

BP – up 165%
Chevron-Texaco - up 294%
Conoco-Phillips - up 44%
ExxonMobil - up 125%"

Consumer's Union October '04 - " U.S. oil companies' profits for the first nine months of this year have increased by more than 35 percent over last year, with the bulk of those profits coming from charges for domestic oil and gas refining, not from higher crude oil prices, consumer groups say.
Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union say the record profits, coupled with the Department of Energy's latest report that heating oil prices have hit a new record --$2.06 per gallon --are a clear indication that oil companies are profiting at the expense of American consumers.
"After analyzing the most recent quarterly statements of the domestic U.S. oil industry, it is not only clear that profits have climbed to record levels, but that the major source of those profit increases is the jump in domestic refining and marketing margins," said Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America. "Well over half of that increase in profits has come not from crude oil, but from profits on domestic U.S. refining and marketing."

ABC News April '05 – "As American consumers increasingly feel the pinch at the pump, oil companies have watched their profits soar.
The newest numbers from the second quarter of this year show Exxon Mobil with a 32 percent increase in earnings over this time last year — that's more than $7.6 billion.
BP saw a profit increase of 38 percent, totaling $6.7 billion, while Conoco Phillips — the third largest oil company in the country — recorded a 56 percent increase in profit, more than $3 billion.
"The huge profits are enormous because the public is drastically overpaying what it costs to produce," said Joan Claybrook, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.
Many of these companies long ago bought oil reserves at prices of $10 to $25 a barrel. With prices peaking near the $67 mark, the profit margin has been enormous.
Even more eye-opening is the profit in Saudi Arabia. Saudis are making an average of $208 million more each day since the increase in crude oil prices first began in December 2003."

We're being gouged at the pump, people, and don't let anyone tell you differently. The proof is in the profits as reported by the oil companies, themselves.

Oil companies own oil. If they are smart they are selling their oil futures as the price climbs. This is most likely where they are making the majority of there profits not in the production of fuel.

But not all refiners own oil Marthon is mainly a Exploration/Production company Valero(big player) is just a refiner, so is Clark and some others. Exxon is a big production and refiner. BP was mainly a production company that recently bought refining capacity in the US. And it is all a commodities market.

 

[Campground Cattle]

For those who claim these high gas prices are justified by bashing the EPA and moaning about refining capacity: Just one of your attempt to discredit someone.

In my opinon you are lower than a snakes belly in a wagon rut JMO.

"Discrediting someone?" You said I posted false information. Show me where I posted false information or we'll know who is trying to discredit someone. As for you opinion: :roll:

Thanks Caustic

Frankie this isn't the first time you have tried to discredit. You try to pick a lot of fights it's my way or the highway. You have a very tree hugger attitude defending the EPA. Its all right for China or Mexico to burn any type of fuel and us to have shortages,I clearly see your loyalty doesn't lie with the U.S. You have stated before you don't want the refineries but you want cheap fuel and cry and whine. I guess your one of the tree huggers that think Katrina is Bush fault just like Cat 5 Camile in 69 and Cat 5 Carla in 61 oh hell the 1900 storm on Galveston is probablly his fault as well as the oil companies.