kapkomet

QUOTE(Athomeboy_2000 @ Apr 27, 2006 -> 06:06 PM) How much does a gallon of E85 cost you? Just curious how it compares to regular gas. E85 - that's the blend, right? I didn't read the article, just the snippet. But... It's hard to gage the impact with the overall rise in prices. Supposedly, it's adding about 10 cents on the gallon? Chicago supposedly has had this all along for the last couple of years?

yea. My Explorer gets definitely 10-15% less. It sucks. Thanks for the article.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Apr 27, 2006 -> 05:40 PM) Actually, I'm not even sure we are getting ripped off. I'm just trying to say that I don't like the business model of the oil companies in that they make a finite profit per dollar sold instead of per gallon, which is why they benefit when the price goes up. But it's hard to say people are getting ripped off if they're willing to pay the price. Gotcha. Now I see what you have been trying to say all this time, I think? INDEED they are paying higher prices for the oil... I think you got that part. And YES, they are profiting more and more (and WAY more lately) on the oil they own the rights to. That is a lot of the revenues... but the gas "profits" are going to be volume driven largely. Do you agree with that much?

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Apr 27, 2006 -> 03:58 PM) Yes, but at least for now, there are many problems with that approach, including the fact that the more ethanol you put in a fuel, the harder it is for some engines to burn the fuel (eth. isn't all that easy on engine parts, especially plastics, if they're not designed for it.) It's also higher octane than gasoline. Ethanol also can be harder to transport than gasoline, so if it's all done in areas where corn is grown, it can be a bear to get it into cities. The real key, IMO, is going to be figuring out a way to develop ethanol using a plant that can be grown widely enough to cut down transportation costs and refined cheaply enough that it doesn't spike fuel prices too much. I think we're starting to get close on those goals. Once we're there, then the question becomes getting cars that can use mainly ethanol in consumer's hands. So in your opinion, do you think ethonal has a negative impact on mileage? I don't know enough about it... and it seems like you might.

ALL HAIL BALTA! MR. FINANCE GUY! It amazes me how you will sit here and argue with a CPA and a economics major. We're wrong, you're right, end of thread as far as I'm concerned, because no matter what you don't want to see that there is more here then what you can see. We've explained it about 6 different ways now, and we're obviously wrong. Thanks for setting me straight on how the profits can be measured at these companies, and how the financials work. Edit: yea, Balta, this is probably out of line, but you keep intermingling things (like southsider said) and when we try to explain it, it gets even more twisted. I personally am making a value judgement that I'm not sure you really want to know, you just want to support the notion that we're getting ripped off.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Apr 27, 2006 -> 04:42 AM) As some people know, unlike third world dictatorships, the US President doesn't fire the military and replace them with all new people. Carter did not plan that strategic rescue mission, the military did, the same ones that were there when Ford was President and when Reagan was President. I believe the Commander in Chief gets far too much credit for operational planning. The military had a plan that they thought would have the best chance of freeing the hostages. Carter gave the military the green light. Should he have been on the mission? Should he personally have done the planning? You've got to be kidding.

So Exxon Mobil reports a 8.5 billion profit and gets whacked on Wall Street because it didn't meet expectations. What a screwed up society we live in when 8.5 billion is not 'good enough'.

I don't blame Ozzie for the lineup changes - Sunday game - Monday night late start - flying the whole way across the country. Who cares? They still had a chance to win.

Again, who owns the oil? The margin % on refining products has not changed. THAT is not where they are making their profits. They are making their profits on what they own, which is not NEARLY as much as what Saudi, Iran, etc. own. So, yes, they are profiting from it, but refining it is NOT where they are gaining their bigger profits.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 08:39 PM) Agreed, I will also call it quits at this point. Since I don't think I advocated doing anything about it, I'm not even sure exactly what I was advocating, aside from trying to show that oil companies make more money strictly on price increases. Basic accounting 101. REVENUE - COST = MARGIN If your revenues stay the same, and your costs go down, MARGIN can go up. If your revenues fractionally (as a %) go up and your costs go down, MARGIN goes up more then revenues, and looks a lot higher. You've been conditioned over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over (you get the point yet?) again to see that the bastard oil companies are being greedy assholes and profiting WAY more then they should on oil. And a million articles all over the internet in pieces can support it. But from a pure logic standpoint, the PRICE ALONE of oil is simply NOT the only reason the MARGIN has gone up, which is what you are trying to advocate, which is only partially true. Furthermore, and back to the original point of Rex's thread, I find it FASCINATING how the Democrats for YEARS have been advocating that we need to pay for our oil, how it's not fair we're not paying the same price that Europe is, etc. etc. etc. and now that the field is leveling out some, they are all crying like there is no tomorrow to say that it's Bush's fault. They WANTED this for years, to :rolly conserve, to make people in America :rolly drive little ass cars and not these big SUVs, etc. WAAAAH. STFU! And the Republicans are following the crap trail, hook, line and sinker. Idiots. Talk about a political screwfest. It's not right, and why I hate the Democratic party. You know what, if they were consistant, and really wanted to light George Bush's ass, they should say, you're in Iraq, it was really for oil (accourding to the Dems all along), TURN ON THE SPIGOTS, BIG BOY!

http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/1168.html And I wonder why nothing's changed in 30+ years? Could be that the government is making a killing - even more then the dastardly BIG OIL companies.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 06:18 PM) I'll grant you that in theory you should be correct, and for the most part you are...we're just sort of splitting hairs compared to what the folks in Saudi Arabia are earning, but the fact is that the bolded statement just isn't correct. It's been proven again and again and again over the last few years that as oil prices have gone up, the oil company profits have gone up. I understand this is different from revenues and revenues should go up as the price goes up, but the fact is that profits have gone up as well. In fact, when you just read some random press report about the profits of any oil company in any quarter, they include something like this: I understand the position you're trying to argue, and it makes sense from a hypothetical and economic standpoint. The oil company shouldn't want oil prices to go up, because they should be able to sell more oil and earn a higher profit at lower oil prices. However, that's simply just not what the last 5 years have taught us. As oil prices have gone up, the growth in oil demand has in fact started to slow a little bit, but the rate of increase of oil company profits has been divorced from the growth in sales. The only thing it has correlated with is the increase in price. And the more the price has gone up, the higher their profits have gone. As far as I can tell, I can account for nothing other than the price which would have driven the massive increases from profits on the $10 billion scale in roughly 2001 to profits on the $100 billion scale in 2005. Subsidies haven't been raised nearly that much, demand has not grown that much, there haven't been major innovations or mergers which would come close to accounting for that. The only variable left in this whole mess is the price, and everything we've seen since 2001 suggests that as the price of oil goes up, the profits of oil companies go up. Yes, revenues go up as well, but that's to be expected. What shouldn't be expected is the increase in profits. But oil companies do NOT set the price. So how again, is this their fault?

Answer me this. Who actually owns the oil?

I personally think this year's show is BORING compared to last year. In fact, I'm making it a point to NOT watch it. The talent is just not nearly as good this year.

I can't break this into what I want to right now but... 3,493.9 * $55 (2005 price) = $192,164.50 3,767.1 * $55 = $207,190.50 $15,026. - pure REVENUE (which is your 8% I keep bringing up), which doesn't equal PROFIT. You all keep missing that. What about cost cutting to draw out existing oil? What about 'infastructure' that was already in place? Many of the companies have consolidated cost structures through mergers and acquisitions. Be careful, because you are having a tendency to mix apples and oranges here (revenue and profit). You have to apply the right delta - which is what I've been trying to say in a not so eloquent way.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 04:43 PM) One of the things the NatGeo article talks about is the new "dome" they are going to build over it. Bascially they are going to build what looks like a domed baseball stadium on tracks, and when they finish it, they will roll it into place over the exsisting cover, and lock it into place. They then will go inside this structure and dismantle the old structure so that it doesn't collapse. Interesting stuff actually. Wow. That's some trick of engineering if they can pull that off. I'll have to go see if I can scam up that NatGeo article. It sounds cool.

Right. But why? And the answer is not as obvious (price) as you might think.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 04:28 PM) It's a disaster waiting to happen again. If the concrete fill that surrounds the reactor breaks open, the explosion and radiation release will be worse than before. From what I understand, it's rapidly deteriorating. That's not a good situation.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 04:21 PM) Ok, so based on your theory, there should therefore be a direct correlation between the percentage increase in oil company profits and the percentage increase in oil production. In other words, if I make a fixed amount of profit on 1 gallon of gas regardless of the price of that gasoline, the increase in any company's profitability should be directly correlated with the world's oil consumption. In 2004, the world consumed roughly 30 billion barrels of oil. The number for 2005 is roughly 31 billion barrels of oil. Therefore, there should have been an increase in profits of all oil companies between 2004 and 2005 of 3.2%, because that was the increase in how many barrels of oil were sold between the 2 years. Exxon Mobil, for example, saw it's profits go up 17% from 2003 to 2004, and by my numbers, about 40% from 2004 to 2005. The oil industry as a whole saw its profits surge by 19% in the first quarter of 2006, despite the fact that oil consumption is growing at a vastly slower rate. In other words, oil companies are making vastly more money not because they're selling more oil, they're making more money because they're making more money per gallon. Partially true. But what was the consumption in 1999? I'd like to see that. Volume is driving this more then the price. I'd have to chart it to probably make it a better argument and I don't know that I have that much time.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 04:03 PM) You guys be careful throwing that 'bulls***' word around. Just sayin'.

And Rex, you'll full of (bull)s***.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 01:45 PM) Now Kap, that is absolute bulls***. To say big oil doesn't profit from high oil prices is absolutely wrong when ExxonMobil made the highest quarterly profits in US business history last year when oil hit 70 dollars a barrel. You're acting like the oil companies only make money on the gasoline part of the equation. The problem is that if you free float the resources that a society needs to function in an unregulated market, sometimes you find a situation where the cost of those resources finds your country held economically hostage. There has to be a better way to ensure our resources at a reasonable price for our needs. Part of that is moving away from dependence on foreign oil - something that could have been partially accomplished if Clinton or Bush had the balls to seriously raise the CAFE standards in the last 14 years. But part of it has to do with the way the resources are distributed. Yea, they profit, of course they do. But they profit from the AMOUNT PRODUCED (ie the supply), not the price, by in large. Now that oil is $70 bbl, all of a sudden, it's profitable to pull that crap up out of the ground. Did you see the same supply when oil was $12 bbl? No. The same goes for natural gas. Now that it's profitable to pull it up from the ground, there's wells all over the place. There's 5 or 6 within eyesite of my house as we sit on one of the largest natural gas fields in the United States. This wouldn't have happened if the demand didn't dictate the price being higher, and therefore the supply is shorter, and therefore it's more profitable to pull this stuff out. Basically, I'm saying that the profits are more volume driven then they are price driven... they are reaping the benefits, bigtime, of the price by expanding volume at the same time. I agree with the last part of your post. Hell, since Nixon we have heard our presidents say "we need to get off of the foreign dependence"... personally, I think the strategy long term is to suck the middle east dry and then we will have all the fuel. That will be an interesting table turn... but in the short term, it costs us dearly.

Waaah, Queen. You need to come play with us anyway at the talkbhawks.com site (and 4hockeyfans, )

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 06:19 AM) Bush's speech is GOP desperation to be honest with you. Although I think Schumer has a point. We need to look at a way where Oil industries can profit while the resources we need to make our society operate don't hold us hostage economically. But Rex... the oil companies DO NOT CONTROL THE PRICES! That's VERY important. They make the same (roughly) 10 cents on the gallon whether the price is $3.00 per gallon or $1.50 a gallon. If they lose, it's a percentage, not a per cent thing. They are profiting from the high prices, of course, but NOT nearly like what is being politicized... and that is my point. It's important that people get that. Now, if the price of oil is $12 bbl., they lose money - and they had to consolidate, etc. in the late 1990's. It was how they survived.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 03:11 AM) It would give some immediate relief and help prices rise more evenly than a shock for consumers who it hurts most. Bulls***. These people do not control the prices. THE MARKET GUYS ON NYMEX DO! Why is it that it seems like no one gets that? The 'talk' is just that, 'talk'. Chucky Schumer needs to STFU when he is talking about "BIG OIL" being the one who is causing this. THEY AREN'T!! But it's all rhetoric and bulls***, including the spew from GWB today. That's the weakest he's looked, EVER, IMO. f***ing moron needs to lead instead of playing with the political pigs.