If the oil companies are just passing on oil prices, why are they making huge profits?

I tidbit of information:

When the US invaded Iraq all the Iraqi ministries were overrun with looters except the one surrounded and secured by our forces, the Iraqi Ministry.

GWB and Dick are shareholders as well right?

I've asked this same question many times and there doesn't seem to be a good answer. I'm not falling for the "supply and demand" excuse because demand does not go up as fast as the prices do. Let's face it, prices are going up daily at a very rapid rate. This has never happened before. The barrel price was around $29-$30 per barrel in 2000. In just the last 8 years that price has gone up almost 400%. That's staggering. OPEC is doing this on purpose and what's shocking is the oil companies are taking advantage of it and their fellow Americans. They won't admit the truth. I find it curious that when they sit in front of a congressional hearing and questions are asked....and their answers are blatant lies, afterwards we don't hear any solutions. It's as if the formal questioning in front of the senate committee was just a formality. Something to appease the American people.

The Europeans have higher prices than we do, and they all drive small cars and use their superior mass transit systems to make up for it. We should take a lesson. But wait...Bush is about to veto legislation that would help fund Amtrak. God forbid we do anything to help our future.

"...why are they [oil companies] making huge profits?"
Because they can! Living in Fresno one must take in account that only outer space is farther away from Capitol Hill. What ever news trickle down to us in this LA norte, bear not witness to the Democrats in Congress doing anything about it. Maintaining a job west of the Mississippi might as well be an exercise in futulity, for one can't afford fuel for transportation. The ground work for it had been done many yars ago when the oil companies and car makers conspired to get rid of public transportation. When I got to Fresno in 1952, the street car tracks were still in place. Most of the European metropolitan areas have not reduced public transportation availability, but have curtailed frequency of runs. People there can live, make ten fortunes and loose ten fortunes and never need a car. Workers in Europe go to work carrying a brown bag lunch but don't have to schlepp around tons of tools because employers provide the tools on site. Without
personal transportation this blue collar family would not have eaten very regularly.
Nero had the games, we had television. And now we have plenty of synthetic Spanish fly to keep us from the barricades of righteous indignation. Until people remember that
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness does not automatically come with the little gift parcel in the delivery room, but that they have to be earned by being involved with WE THE
PEOPLE, things will get worse.
Religions are too diverse as to serve as an engine for national liberty or unity. But the Declaration of Indepence should be what drives America.
"...governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the the consent of the governed...whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it..."
We may not have the last word choosing the president, but government begins with elected government in every hamlet.
Combine them all, and it will be a tide flooding
over Capitol Hill. And that's the marvel that is this democratic republic.
But without the people making it so, it is but words without substance.
In less than a month is Independence Day. Could we make it the beginning of indepence from the tyranny of oil?

"...just what free-market mechanism is it that explains why the Fresno region has the highest gas prices around?"
I believe it was a [president] Coolidge dictum
that America's only business is business; her only business. President Reagan must have been an apostle of it, plus believing in social Darwinism, a doctrine advocating "...that America was governed by a natural aristocray, based on wealth. Any governmental interference with the situation could only slow down economic progress....slum conditions
were natural for the unfit, who by lack of thrift and industrious habits had not survived the economic struggle. Any attempt by government to relieve poverty was an attempt to defy natural law." Fresno has a lot of
former unfit, that have survived the economic struggle "...that rewarded the strong and eliminated the weak..." in the struggle for profit.
Was the persecution of Fresno's homeless an exercise in this horrible social Darwinism? I hope
that the dialogue goes on indefinetly on this one.
My up bringing was guided by the philosphy of a statesman of yesterday:
"Each member of human society, needing help is entitled to help. And we human society have the God
ordained duty to render this help." This dictum was not religion inspired.
Signing off in anticipation of many comments.

Jim,

Businesses & industries have a formula for setting retail prices based on wholesale cost. As the wholesale cost (per barrel) goes up, the retail price (at the pump) goes up proportionally. The gross dollar amount of profits might show record gains, but as a percentage, I'll bet their profit margin remains fairly steady.

Is it right that the oil companies are making dollars hand over fist? Prob'ly not. BUT consider the economic effects of headlines such as: "Oil Profit Margins Drop by 2%" or "Oil Exec's Wring Hands Over Rapidly Decreasing Profit Margins." Most people would think if the almighty oil companies are in trouble, then the whole economy must be folding into a disaster.

Although the oil companies are shamelessly capitalizing on oil prices (in a capitalist nation), I think the real culprits are the OPEC countries. And I don't think their motive is greed; I think it's to hit us where it hurts--the citizens' pockets. Get the citizens discouraged with the foundations of their American being (a free economy and the democratic republic style of government), and the country becomes unstable.

Why are Fresno's prices so high? Because we tolerate it. Look at all the empty buses and bike lanes. When gas was $2.89, I boldly stated, "This is ridiculous! If gas goes over 3 bucks, I'm gonna start riding my bike!" Well, I've been driving my car a lot since then... Guilty as charged.

Demand is not out of proportion to supply, but it's not going down either. Until we create less demand, we keep ourselves in this situation. Someone said, "If it happens once, you're a victim; if it happens again, you're a volunteer."

And what's the point? It seems that we want to blame the high price to the oil companies. Look at India and China, big consumers nowadays of oil and how they subsidize the price. Besides, those folks who hold 401k and mutual funds DO have their money invested to a point in oil or oil exploration companies. We can also blame, like another post above that we are victims to the lack of public transportation in this area. What about the way our cities are built, where businesses are far from residential dwellings.

Behold! Jim, you and I are now enlightened. It's a conspiracy by the OPEC nations that Fresno has the highest fuel prices in the area. Those evil foreigners are plotting "..to destabilize our democratic republic style of government..." (Matt McIntyre>)
LIVE SEARCH, perhaps is also part of that conspiracy. And I quote: "...Crude oil represents only a quarter of the price of oil products in many countries...it's really their own [consumers] governments that are primarily responsible for oil's high price..." And I read in the Fresno Bee that OPEC had reduced the price per barrell. But even then, the price at the Fresno filling station has not dropped.
Culturally, I don't consider it a plus that every Dick's and Jane's stocks are in petroleum
related investments. In my
book that makes us a cannibalistic economy. Dick and Jane reap their higher dividends, derived from the inadequate income of their neighbors who are forced to buy the gasoline, lest they don't go to work. And with our current rate of working poor, who can ask for more destabilizing...no OPEC required...

Jim,

MOI must really get you to see the 'burning bush' in back garden. It is quite brilliant and shouts; 'Vote Republican'.

You have been sniffing the fumes from the Donkey 'poo' too long.

As to why price of petrol is high in Fresno, go figure. One would think that massive number of registered motors in California the price would be lower, the supply and demand principle. MOI does not own a motor or drive, never have, public transport is the way to go.

Jim, ever think of using a bicycle? No high petrol for that and one can get right slim.

We can’t build refineries; they won’t let us drill off-shore anywhere or even in the frozen wastes of the Arctic; We should be drilling off all coasts. We have capped wells all over the country; we haven’t build any new nuclear power plants in decades; we know where the oil is, but nobody will let us go for it. We have the tar sands of Colorado and oil shale in BC and the western US. We have reserves that experts say will last for 400 years (at least).

We should do anything & everything we can to produce more energy, coal to oil production, wind power, solar power, hydrogen production, coal production, and the extremely safe nuclear power plants. ("If the Clinton administration had opened up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and encouraged –– not discouraged –– the building of refineries, we would not be over the OPEC barrel today," columnist Jane Chastain). In ‘06 the Democrats promised to bring down gas prices if they won a majority. That worked out well, didn’t it?

Prices are high because the government is pandering to the global-warming environmentalists, eco-wackos, the Branch Algorians.

There is a massive failure on the part of the media to systematically identify just who it is that seeks to wreck the American way of life. Just who are the eco-wackos who would dismantle our economy? The drive-by media is at least partially complicit in this on-going energy crisis.

Only time will tell whether or not the eco-wackos are a Marxist fifth column, a clandestine faction of the Democrat party, are guilty of deliberate sabotage or are just plain stupid. The end result of their wilful ignorance will be the same - crisis after crisis, higher prices, recession, our way of life taken from us by the extremists of the left.

It’s not about Bush! It’s all about the eco-wackos! "....Green extreme has crippled our ability to increase our supply of fuel, there is no relief for the foreseeable future," Columnist Jane Chastain.

Who says we can't build more refineries, T.C.? Can you provide any examples where an oil company has even tried in recent years?

The GOP had control of Congress for 12 years, and sole control of Congress and the White House for 6 of those years. Trying to blame everything on environmentalists is bogus. The fact is that the oil companies are making record profits now. So why should they try to change anything?

The D.O.D.'s DAILY oil needs exceed all of our country's ANNUAL mass transit needs, trains, planes, buses, subways, etc...with over 1000 military bases world-wide, it has, (regardless of how you feel about this reality,) become quite a burdensome endeavor,...the last military budget was literaly open-ended, so,by their own admission, they're unaccountable. Let's re-think Empire, it's just too damned expensive....and Matt, I'm back on the bike more, but there's definately a limit to how much can be accomplished...that 50 lb. bag of compost? fergetaboutit.

Lots of people are being duped into believing high oil prices are all due to "liberals" and "enviro-wackos." But it turns out that there's a lot of speculation in the oil market by hedge funds these days. In other words, billionaires are playing money games with the oil market, raking in tons of money while we all pay at the pump. As a result there's a speculative bubble in the oil market. And when that bubble burst, guess who gets to bail out those hedge funds that are left holding the bag? Yep, the same taxpayers who have been paying all these exorbitant prices at the pump. We can thank Bush's tax cuts and the resulting concentration of wealth for a lot of that.

This is in addition to the unrest in the Mid-East, much of which can be attributed to Bush & Co. - oil men. And now Bush is making noise about attacking Iran. If we do that, then $4 a gallon will be a distant memory. How does $10 a gallon sound?

Drilling ANWR wouldn't make a dent in the price of a gallon of gas. If the oil companies wanted more refineries, they would build them. But they're making money hand over fist, so why should they?

It's time to change the way we do business in this country before we all end up owing our souls to the company store.

T.C. Morgans's comments,persistently, stand out from the crowd because they are so angry. Not the anger of righteous indignation but the yellow shades of venting choler.
Fifth column of Marxist eco-whackos; Clandestine faction of the Democrat party, guilty of deliberate sabotage or plain stupidity, and so forth. I dare presume that Mr. Morgan is no youth full of "Sturm und Drang" but is closer to my own maturity. All that name-calling is no solution to the problem of no longer being able to pay ones bills. Not for lack of prudence or being industrious, but a run-away inflation in the price of goods we just can't do without to maintain LIFE, LIBERTY and PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.
America must find the will to bring back the backbone of her strength, the traditionally, politically independent middle class.
We all must subscribe to the notion that we must not curse the dark but to light a candle. I am so chuck full of homilies...where there is a will there is a way...the way being the words of the Declaration of Independence. As in everything in wrongful human endeaver, there comes a point of no return. Why push toward it? Is "...the answer my friend, blowing in the wind..? Or can November 2008 be the first step?

There are no gasoline shortages. Crude oil prices seem to be the manipulations by the futures market. Sad, but true, we are victims of a system that isn't working. There's nothing wrong with making profit, but it seems a few people have figured out how to make lots of money, above and beyond what is imaginable.

I don't buy the idea of drilling for more oil in places like the artic and Alaska isn't going to change anything. Prices will probably go up anyway. The best thing to do is to push for alternative energies and concentrate using less gasoline and diesel. I also think we'll have to wait until Bush is out before anything can be done about oil prices. He and his administration are part of the oil culture that created this mess in the first place. In the meantime raise hell, write your congressman and drive as little as possible.

Isabell:

Don’t mistake righteous indignation for "anger." Don’t mistake passion and concern for malice - that has never been my heart.

Gal 4:16 - "Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth?"

I’m just a big lovable fuzzball! Not a mean bone in my body!

When all else fails, there is always the Bible, even when toatally out of context, like the recent quoting of Gal 4:16.

This now is in context with the out of context:
Psalm 41: "...O Lord...though favourest me, because mine enemy doth not triumph over me...
though upholdest me in mine integrity, and settest me before thy face for ever..."

Don't hoovers make short shrift of "fuzzballs"?

pax vobiscum my friend.

That's the spirit, Ronald Nagata. The Spirit of 76.
And it shall triunph over Union 76, et.al.
"Raise hell, and write your congressman..."

And make sure to vote for the right people, come November.

I just returned fron San Diego where gas was almost twenty cents a gallon less than Fresno last Friday but by this Friday it was starting to catch up a bit yet still down about 10 cents a gallon from Fresno. Everytime you see the gas truck at a station you can bet it will go up 6-10 cents that day or the next. All the extra fees in California are killing us and are not really doing anything to help our environment. Gas in Texas and many other states havent even seen $4 a gallon yet.

Mike D.

The GOP has NOT controlled Congress for the last two years. In that span of time:

-Gas prices have spiraled out of control;
-Home foreclosures are at record or near-record levels;
-Unemployment has slowly increased and is approaching 6%;
-Confidence in our economy (as reported numerous times by all networks) is very low;
-...and we're still in Iraq.

Yet, everyone STILL blames the GOP.

Under Clinton;

-the FBI raided a private citizen's home to retrieve one Cuban for no justifiable reason (where was the ACLU?);
-a bunch of U.S. citizens were killed in Waco, TX for refusing to cooperate with authorities;
-Bubba re-defined the meaning of sex and the word "is";
-confidential personnel files were being "reviewed" by the missuz (and potential future party nominee for president) in the White House kitchen;
-and some obscure terrorist named BinLaden was allowed to roam free when the chance to nab him was passed up.

...Yet the GOP is labeled as dishonest and greedy

Here's the Democratic "beacon of hope:"
-has belonged to a radical, divisive, hateful church for 20 years. 20 YEARS!!! Non-church goers claim that repetitive recitation of prayers and worship are "indoctrination;" so that's 20 years of indoctrination of divisive hate and resentment!
-has won the backing of labor unions, which are riddled with corruption and organized crime connections--especially in the Chicago area;
-has been serving as a senator for a short time, and now wants to run the whole country;
-and is constantly having to go back and clarify his statements and actions.

...now that's what I call "promise!"

RE: McIntyre
Unless I am mistaking, that "...one Cuban that was retrieved[????]for no justfiable reason was a child (a Cuban national) whom Cubans in the United states kept from his father in Cuba. Of course the child was returned to his Cuban father. The United States is not in the habit of shanghaiing
children of foreign nationals, no matter who is U.S. president at the
time.
I am not sure I like that computer thing called BLOG. It seems that some folks have nothing better to do then write mean messages in crude language.
It sure is not much in the way of community service.

Ms. Lawson:

There are countless "nationals" who have been brought into this country with family members back home who want them back in their homelands. I don't see the FBI beating down doors to rescue them. The Elio Gonzalez incident was a political move that stomped on the constitutional rights of the homeowner. If I remember correctly, Elio's mother died while escaping from Cuba, and his story brought a great deal of unwanted attention to him and his U.S. relatives.

Also, "crude" & "mean?" please call me sarcastic, but crude and mean don't describe me. Where's that "lighten up" attitude you wrote about somewhere else? You sounded as if you were enjoying the bantering : )

Additional note to Mike D. regarding whackos

Visit the EarthFirst! website and you'll see why they're referred to as "whackos." Their primary purpose seems to be to "disrupt" the democratic system by which we live. You'll also notice a great number of links to other radical and anarchistic websites. Many enviro-zealots quote data skimmed from these types of organizations, which is why the leftist arguments on issues such as oil, carbon emissions, and global warming carry so little credibility. If you trace Al Gore's data to its source, I'll bet it's heavily rooted in a not-so-credible "theory" or a "research-based" study created by fringe elements of EarthFirsters and the like.

For example (I know you like specific examples), on a Discovery channel special I saw about a year ago, one of the "most highly respected experts on the subject" (and that's almost a direct quote from his glorious introduction) stated that the density of an ice sample was like "nothing we've ever seen in the entire history of mankind." He used this statement to imply that it's only during the last few years that the average global temperature has changed this drastically, but conveniently failed to mention that the earth has undergone repeated cooling and heating called ice ages. The "entire history of mankind" he mentioned is about 10,000 years out of hundreds of millions of years of dynamic natural history--in other words, change happens. Oh, and never mind that the surface ice (or near-surface ice) of the glacier he was sampling has not had thousands of years of compression from tons of ice above--but, hey, I only have a physical geography degree; what would I know about anything like glaciers?

It's sad that so many people think their new hybrid is going to save some penguins or polar bears. Go convince the Chinese government (who is drilling oil barely 50 miles off our coast in the Gulf--reference; George Will, Washington Post, about two weeks ago) to employ their stellar technology in order to demonstrate compassion for humans, dogs, and cats and reduce THEIR 1.5 billion people's worth of carbon emissions. They won't even help evacuate their own citizens from earthquake-devastated areas! But I guess Barack Obama has a plan to get the Chinese to cooperate; just loosen up the trade policy a little and...wait--Bill Clinton already did that!

Okay, that's enough ranting for one night...

Visiting the Earth First web site may be a waste of time because they are neither mainstream America nor the global scientific community, who are concerned about the changes in our environment which tend to point toward being of great detriment to the survival of our lives and cultures as we know them.

Not all people are brought up the same way. But there are universally accepted standards of what is the difference between being sarcastic or being just rude, of what is clinical detachment versus subjective demagoguery (brow-beating), the difference between respectful disagreement and disrespectful insults.
The difference between creative categorizing and namecalling. Interestingly enough, namecalling is not allowed since Biblical times. "...whosoever shall say, Though fool, shall be in danger of hell fire..."

A precondition would have to be to believe that there is a hell. But that is not the point of this exercise. The point is that namecalling has been frowned upon for a very long time.

And this now is an exercise in sarcasm...a BC degree in geography an expert in grand scale climatic changes maketh not.