On Thu, 28 Apr 2011 20:26:18 -0700, wrote:

On Thu, 28 Apr 2011 22:40:34 -0400, Wayne B
wrote:

On Thu, 28 Apr 2011 20:55:36 -0400, wf3h wrote:

On Thu, 28 Apr 2011 20:32:40 -0400, Wayne B
wrote:

On Thu, 28 Apr 2011 13:55:18 -0700, wrote:

You read it right... Big Oil made $18B in three months and nearly $1T
in 10 years

Next time you fill up your car/truck/boat/whatever, you should thank
them for investing countless billions of dollars in exploration and
drilling.


that would drive prices down, not up

You'd think so wouldn't you? There's only one problem - they are
discovering less new oil than they are selling. The fact that they
are spending huge amounts of money on exploration and drilling is a
matter of public record. You can look it up as Casey Stengel used to
say. Every new barrel of oil that is discovered and developed costs
a great deal more than the oil that it replaces.

Here's a good start if you're interested:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrocarbon_exploration

And yet... they made $18B and didn't pay their fair share in taxes,
plus they got gov't subsidies... sounds like they're doing just fine.

That's a little subjective don't you think? What is their "fair
share" and how much are they under paying in your opinion?
You do realize that increasing their taxes would increase costs and
that would get passed along as higher prices? Quoting profit numbers
is meaningless unless it is framed in the context of sales and
investments. If you made $18B on $990B in sales, that is not
unreasonable at all, just big numbers.

They don't really get a subsidy as such, not like farmers who get
direct payments. People and corporations who produce oil get
something called a depletion allowance which is a partial credit
against their exploration and production costs. It has a long
history, nothing new. The concept is somewhat similar to the
depreciation allowance for purchased assets which I'm sure you are
familiar with.