Balta1701

How do you write up a piece on BMac and talk only about his curve? I still think his change is his nastiest pitch.

Rick Santorum, casually admitting he no longer lives in Pennsylvania.

QUOTE(knightni @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 03:36 PM) Ross ran like a 70 yr old who was set on fire whilst being chased by a bear with bees coming out of it's mouth. He barely made it without snapping his hammy. In fact, he took a funny hop waltzing in to third that actually made it look like he hurt himself. Seemed to be laughing afterwards though. The Mariners' announcers actually were wondering if he'd hurt himself.

It's stats like this that make me miss Timo. Wasn't he like the worst player in the AL in VORP terms last year?

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 02:15 PM) Make a poll huh? No thanks, i really dont give a s*** what everyone else thinks. IM just wondering why the quality of a team ruins someone's chances at being MVP. IN other sports it helps the player, but not in the NBA. Billups was very important to his team's success, wouldnt being extremely valuable on the best team make you most valuable? That's the big problem with the definition of the award itself...it's called the "Most valuable player" award, which implies something different from "the best player". But, everyone can have different definitions about what value means to a team, so we wind up a bit muddled. It'd really be nice if there was a "Player of the year" award in the 3 major sports to go along with the MVP award. In baseball we could call it the Pujols.

I don't want to go over this again, but I've done the best I can in previous posts to show that in fact, costs have gone up significantly in the past few years, and have gone up at such a rate that would have forced margins down significantly if a the oil company revenue or even profit per gallon of gas was held constant, which is what they tell us they do, which is what I don't beleive the data supports.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 02:04 PM) Once again, the talent of the players around someone makes them less of a player? If you can't use the talent of the players around him as an argument against a person earning an MVP award, how can you use the record of the team as an argument for a person earning an MVP?

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 01:58 PM) More talent, or players who play together? Detroit really plays the game well, its assinine that because they are good, nobody on their team could be MVP. Jordan was surrounded by some of the best talent, does that make him not as good? Well, then I guess we can go back to the question...where would the team and the teammates be without that player? Jordan never won MVP awards in his latter years despite being the best player by far, he only won them early, when he was carrying his team into the playoffs. Once Pippen had really developed, Rodman was added, Kukoc was found, etc., Jordan stopped winning them. I think the best argument for Nash is probably what happens to the people around him when you subtract him. Yeah you move Lebron or Kobe out of their teams and both of them are terrible, but the other people on the team seem like they'd play at the same level. You pull Nash out of his team, and everyone around him becomes massively worse.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 01:53 PM) Why dont you consider Billups to be on that list? He was on a team that out performed every one of the others. He also had more talent around him than any of the others. Nash included.

See you in 8 innings Mark.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 01:35 PM) I really didn't to spend the day here arguing something that will never change anybodies mind anyway, so enjoy the rest of this... I give. 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.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 01:16 PM) Still more fun math tricks there. Guess what. Follow my example I posted before I even saw this and look at the gross margin, which miraculously stays consistant. They are still making the same profit margin per barrel. Bigger numbers mean bigger numbers, but the percentages haven't changed at all. profit So, on the other hand, your model doesn't predict growing profit margins, which according to Bloomberg have gone up by more than a factor of 2 in the past 2 years? What happens in that case, or in the case when costs of production are increasing faster than sales, as they are in this case according to the data I presented earlier? Edit: Oh, and I think there's 1 more issue here. The standard oil company statement is that they take a finite number off the top of each gallon, not a finite percentage. I think the argument I've been trying to make this whole thread is that they in fact are taking a finite (or in this case growing) percentage of the cost of each gallon. So they're doing something like your taking 25% of whatever the cost is, instead of taking $.10 on each gallon. If they were taking a finite amount on each gallon, the only growth would be due to growth in demand, which would have produced increases in profits of like 4% - growth in expenditures over that time. But if they were taking a finite percentage, holding the marginal percentage constant, then as the price went up, the total profit margin would go up. So I think that your setup basically follows what I've been saying; at higher total prices, they take the same percentage, and thus wind up with higher profits.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 12:44 PM) And finally even if you are right, you still haven't oroved your point that the MARGINS on a barrel of oil have changed at all within all of that. If the oil companies are producing more and keeping the same gross margin per barrel, they will still have more revenues. You still haven't shown anywhere that the gross margins per barrel have increased or decreased at all, which is the core of the arguement. Because profits are always going to be less than revenues, even a small move in revenue can trigger a huge percentage move in profits. And until you can actually show that the companies are making more per barrel, and not just more total, there is no reason to believe that the profits of the oil industry are anything but logical. Bloomberg, last August. Edit: found a more recent Bloomberg. The profit margin is even higher now.

QUOTE(SnB @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 12:43 PM) pujols with the game winnign hit. f***ing ridiculous Ok...so here are your options...walk Pujols, and load the bases with 1 out, thus setting up a GW sac fly for Rolen... or pitch to Pujols. No, choking yourself with the rosin bag is not an option. And Isringhausen blew his 2nd save today. His ERA is 6.75. Man, some of the best closers of the last few years are really suffering this year. Lidge, Issy, Gagne, Foulke.

Linky

But 2k5, the cost of producing a barrel of oil has actually not dropped in recent years. Rather, as oil has become more scarce and harder to get out of the ground and refine, the cost of production per barrel has actually gone up. From 2002-2004, the cost of finding 1 new barrel of oil went up roughly 10%. The "lifting" costs, the costs of operating the rigs and using them to get oil out of the ground, also went up by over 10% in that time window. The amount of money spent by oil companies on refining, marketing, and transportation jumped by like 50% over that time period (probably dominated by the increased cost of transportation due to high fuel costs). So the costs of finding a barrel, getting it out of the ground, refining it, and transporting it have all gone up significantly in the past few years. Yet the rate of increase of oil company profits have blown away those increases. So to use your analogy, the cost of doing business would not have dropped to $90, it would have jumped to $110. But instead of the company maintaining a constant profit of $10, the company raised its prices, such that it made a $30 profit anyway.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 11:32 AM) But oil companies do NOT set the price. So how again, is this their fault? They do not set the price per barrel of oil, correct. But they do set the prices that they sell the oil off after it comes through them when they sell it off to a gas station or wholesaler or whoever. They're a middleman - they don't directly own the oil, they lease it, and the Saudis who own the oil rake in the dough when the price goes through the roof. But as a middleman, they get to do some markup while the oil is in their possession; that's what they take out to cover their operating expenses and as profit. They then sell that oil to the consumers. That is where they are able to influence the price at some level; they can simply mark up their price as a percentage of the gas price instead of just a finite amount per gallon of gas. They can increase their markup slightly as the price goes up, and this drives higher profits, which I contend makes up some significant portion of the profit explosion we've seen, because there is no other way increased profits would correlate with increased prices.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 11:02 AM) The oil industries costs are pretty close to fixed. The pipelines are there, as are the gas stations, refinaries, tankers etc. Their costs do not change based on the price of crude oil. (That is an important thing to note right there) The only people who benefit from the increased costs of oil directly are the people who ACTUALLY own the oil coming out of the ground. For the most part the oil companies do not OWN the oil fields. Many within the US are owned, but I can't imagine any of the middle eastern companies selling us their oil fields. Its just like a grocery store passing on a price increase in lettuce to the consumer. The grocery store takes whatever price that they receive, mark it up 10 cents, and sell it to the consumer. The one difference is that for whatever reason, energy is completely contra to economic common sense, and dispite price increases, demand is still rising, so instead of making less revenue like they should, they are making that same margin, more times than they were before. Throw on top of that, a reduction in costs, some government tax breaks and subsididies that you have even repeatedly mentioned, and it doesn't have to be a felony for them to have record profits. Granted it's contra to common sense and economic law, but it is plausible. thi To be honest if the oil companies weren't making record profits we would be in real trouble because that would mean supply was shrinking, and if you added that increasing demand... well lets just say todays scary prices would be tomorrows riots in the streets. 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.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 10:47 AM) Answer me this. Who actually owns the oil? If I understand things correctly, in most cases, it's originally owned by whoever owns the land/mineral rights on the land where the oil is found. But in almost all those cases, the oil exploration rights are leased/sold off to an oil company (sometimes state-owned), which from that point on controls the oil from the moment it is pumped. Exxon, I believe I read somewhere this morning, controls something like 18% of the world's proven reserves through these deals for exploration rights.

QUOTE(Kalapse @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 10:44 AM) Holy s***, 96 HRs for Pujols!!!111 Why is it I half expect to see that from him one of these years?

QUOTE(Wedge @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 10:37 AM) Is there a stud Japanese relief pitcher we can sign... not named Takatsu? We'd really be set then! Daisuke Matsuzaka? Not exactly a reliever...and may be a Boras guy already..

Think they were smart enough to insure that deal?

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 09:58 AM) 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. Ok...found a conversion between Mtoe and oil barrels...and using your oil price conversion 1999: 25.6 billion barrels x 55 = $1.40 trillion 2004: 27.6 billion barrels x 55 = $1.52 trillion (those are BP's numbers.) So, in other words, revenues should have increased by about 8% over that timespan due to the increase in oil consumption. However, as I said, profits have gone up several hundred percent. However, earlier you claimed: Thus, I think I've been basically proven right on this issue here...they are benefiting from vastly more than the amount produced. For another example, in total, in 1999, the major world oil companies earned a total profit of $28.06 billion. Last year, Exxon Mobil earned a profit greater than that number. Also last year, the total profitability of the biggest 5 companies, not including as many as I counted in that last number, was over $108 billion. Now, to look at that increase another way, for that to happen, each barrel of oil sold would have to earn your average oil company $3 more in 2005 than in 1999. They would have earned a profit of roughly $1 per barrel in 1999, and $4 per barrel in 2005. However, we are also told that oil companies produce a fixed profit per gallon of gas. You said so earlier. Therefore, the increased profitability of those companies, to the tune of an additional $3 per barrel sold, has to come from some other source other than just additional sales. Therefore, you're left with the "getting rid of inefficiencies" argument. However, what you're failing to realize is that you just made the argument that the oil companies are operating as a monopoly and basically must be price fixing. If capitalism is actually working, and 1 company develops efficiencies, it should be able to increase its own profit by selling its good at a price below the less efficient companies. In fact, it almost has to do so, because otherwise the other companies will develop their own efficiencies and undersell them. However, in a monopoly, a company is able to fix the price at whatever level it wants, and increase it's profit through generating efficiencies, because whatever efficiencies are generated are not passed back to the consumer. If oil company profits are being generated through efficiencies of some sort, then the oil companies are actively price-fixing, because there is no competition occuring which would force some of those efficiencies to be passed on to the consumer in exchange for larger market shares of the more efficient companies.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 09:49 AM) Right. But why? And the answer is not as obvious (price) as you might think. So, if the answer is not that they're making more $ per gallon of gasoline sold, what is the answer?

QUOTE(WCSox @ Apr 26, 2006 -> 09:46 AM) Nobody is expecting Anderson to hit 20 dingers this year. Hell, Rowand only hit 13 last year. B.A. is touted as having more power than Rowand did when he came up, so some of us were hoping B.A. could make a run at 20 HR's this year.