Oil execs use slick language

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/30/BUGRBK71ND1.DTL

Now here's a good way of understanding high and gross oil company profits..

Well, it's no exaggeration to say that if you run a major oil company, you've just had a pretty darn good week.

The Big Five of Big Oil -- Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell and BP -- reported yet another round of sky-high quarterly profits last week, thanks largely to soaring oil prices.

With many analysts saying that rising demand and limited supply basically leave oil prices nowhere to go but up, is this the new status quo for the oil industry -- a gusher of record profits quarter after quarter as consumers keep getting pummeled at the pump?

"Yes," answered Matthew Simmons, chairman of Houston's Simmons & Co. International, the world's largest investment bank focusing on the energy business.

"And we shouldn't give the companies any credit for their performance," he said. "It doesn't have anything to do with them."

Moreover, he said the industry's profits could reach a whole other order of magnitude within the next few years. "I wouldn't be surprised if oil reached $200 a barrel by 2010," Simmons said.

What oil company profits will be when oil hits $200 a barrel?? Will they be lower due to lower demand?? Will $200 a barrel be enough to bring American's to the conservation table??

Two words, Mr. Simmons: Fuck and you. Who do you think manipulated current events to cause the prices to soar?

Can you tell us just how the oil companies are manipulating current events that would cause prices to soar??

BEFORE 9/11...in it were ALL the big oil execs...SORRY...THEY HAVE MANIPULATED THE PRICE OF OIL!

They had maps of Iraq? Wow. They must be behind it all. I mean, it's not like you can get those just anywhere, only from "Evil and Manipulative R Us".

You guys sure know how to make an argument for a conspiracy theory.

Just so you know, oil companies don't set the price of oil. It's set on the open market where it is based upon supply and demand and the speculations of those. Iraq contributes ZERO dollars to the price of oil and thus ZERO to the price of gasoline and thus ZERO to the profits of oil companies. Oil production in Iraq is stable and is the same as it was under Saddam. In fact, because of foreign investment due to the opening up of the nation, Iraq is poised to DOUBLE their production in the next few years.

speculators hedge their bets on the future price of oil..and THE HEAVIEST PURCHASERS ARE THE OIL COMPANIES THEMSELVES...sorry..

About the maps of Iraq...are you so ignorant as not not know they were about the OIL fields of Iraq and which American oil companies will acquire which oil field...

DO YOU READ THE NEWS?

unless you restrict the amount of oil flowing which has not been done. Pre-war, Iraqi oil production was 2.5 mpd. Today? 2.5 mpd. The price of oil, historically, is the inverse of spare capacity in the world and it's grade. 6 years ago we had 10% spare capacity. Today? None, zip, nada. The only available spare capacity is heavy sour crude in Saudi Arabia which has no market because no nation has the capacity to refine or use it.
Speculators do play a small role in the price of oil but is probably no more than $10-15 which is 20-30 cents.

Did you learn NOTHING from the rolling blackout energy crisis in California back in 2001? Enron used to adamantly swear that they weren't manipulating the markets there, too, until it was proven that...well, would you look at that, they were manipulating the markets!

If you think the oil companies, with their vertical integration, don't in some way control the prices we pay at the pump, then I envy you, as you obviously still believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and that must feel very exciting.

I'm not trying to suggest that the oil companies are completely, 100% responsible for the 200% rise in gasoline prices over the past six years, but they play a methodical, determined role.

It's so blatantly obvious that it's really sickening to see ordinary people, people that aren't on the oil company's PR payroll, defend them. Are you on their payroll? Or, let me guess, you just firmly believe in the power and fairness of unregulated free markets?

Actually, I don't want to know: either way, it's too depressing.