RickSpace

A friend of a friend (of a friend?) named Earl has a blog and the friends I have that know him seem to be touting him as a political savant. I am not in any way disputing that, as I’ve ready only one post he has written and I only really partially disagree with it at that.

Earl, if I’m to understand, is stating that people need to stop blaming big oil companies for the high prices we pay at the pump. If that is indeed his argument, as I said, I only partially disagree with it. I think saying they are not to blame at ALL would be ridiculous. The taxes we pay ARE a substantial part of the cost of gas at the pump. However, did the taxes jump so much that they caused the price per gallon that I pay go from around $1.60 or $1.70 per gallon up to $3.19 per gallon following Katrina? I doubt that was the taxes; in fact if I hadn’t read anything else about it, I would assume that there was enough damage done to domestic oil production equipment during Katrina that the companies had to recoup by raising prices… I guess I wouldn’t have been too miffed about that. In a free market if your cost goes up, your customers’ cost goes up. But, I don’t really believe they were hurting too bad.

“…executives represented five major companies that, along with their global parent corporations, earned more than $32.8 billion during the July-September quarter. Consumers, meanwhile, saw gasoline prices soar beyond $3 a gallon in the aftermath of supply disruptions caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita…”

Oil Company Execs Defend Huge Profits - Yahoo! News

“Exxon Mobil Corp. posted a quarterly profit of $9.9 billion Thursday, the largest in U.S. corporate history, as it raked in a bonanza from soaring oil and gas prices.”

Exxon Mobil quarterly profit $9.9B, biggest ever - Oct. 27, 2005

The quarter in which the American public had to endure a near doubling of cost per gallon for gas, oil companies reported record profits. Not just SALES, but PROFITS. That means that despite the damaged equipment and hits they took during the storms, the amount they cleared above and beyond that was even greater than the quarter before or ANY quarter before, for that matter. How did that happen? Hmm.. I seem to remember paying a good bit at the pump…