Are the oil companies fair?

Question

they say the increase of the prices is just supply and demand. whats up with record profits? campaign reform anyone?

the whole nonsense of nonrenewable, we are going to run out of oil, is nothing more than poppycock. they told us that in the seventies just to increase profits. if its so important to change energy matters why are we wasting so much money trying to land on mars?

Answer 1

Regrettably, the creep keepers do not believe in fairness.

Answer 2

Yes and no, sounds contradictory doesn't it. Running an oil company is VERY expensive. First you need the equipment to extract the oil from a few thousand feet out of the ground, none of that is cheap at all. Second you need a labor force to run the equipment. Then comes storage and refinement. Nothing in this process is cheap, you can't run down to the local hardware store and buy a drill bit head because its a custom built according to where and how deep you're drilling. In a capitalist society, i.e USA, they're in it to make money. Plain and simple (sounds kinda like a corprate answer huh? apologies due) In addition to supply and demand there's added maintenance costs due to aging refinery equipment, corrosion prevention to maintain the structural integrity of the pipeline and so forth. Remember all of this costs lots of money. As far as record profits are concerned, someone else will have to tell you that. Campaign reform will not work simply because you can't get the numbers you need to cause any significant financial damage to the company, even if you were successful then they would increase the price even further due to the disruption of the supply and demand equation. Start with your elected officials to put pressure on the companies to throttle back prices.

Answer 3

Well, you see, when demand outstrips supply, prices rise. When production costs don't rise, the suppliers in question make a higher profit. Over time, this causes other potential supliers to enter the market, increasing supply, and bringing the price back down.

The problem is that, in the energy market, increasing supply take years and massive capital investment, yet the price swings rapidly. Thus, energy companies are very cautious about increasing capacity, since they can find themselves over-invested and making very little money quite suddenly - as happened in much of the 90's, for instance.

Answer 4

Chuckle, Oil companies are not fair & a CEO that does something other than maximize profits will soon find he is unemployeed. The price of Gasoline has recently risen because oil companies have restricted the amount of gasoline they refine... thus the supply. When companies can control the price by restricting the supply of a product, we call that a monopoly or price fixing.
This has proven a better method than rising Oil prices for maximizing profits. For years we were told that the lack of new refineries was due to environmentalists but during the same period oil companies closed 50 refineries in the US. Their goal was, and always has been to run refineries at near 100% of capacity to maximize profits... thus if they had 10 refineries running at 80% of capacity, they closed one. When you have few competitors & they are willing to follow your lead, you can control the price & supply of a commodity.

Answer 5

A private company has only one objective: to make money for it's shareholders. That's the way it works in a capitalist society.

The record profits come from record demand and record sales. The amount an oil company makes off the sale of a gallon of gasoline hasn't increased. If they sell 1 billion gallons last year, and sell 1.5 billion this year, of course the profit goes up.

Fair has nothing to do with it.

Answer 6

Oil companies supply a resource. Everyone on Earth demands this resource.

Mergers and cooperation from oil companies helps to drive up the price, but we live in a capitalist society.

Sooner we can run on hydrogen, the better off we'll all be.

Answer 7

No, the job of the oil companies is to provide their investors with the maximum amount of return on their investments. Since the world pays, and always will, there is no sense in making less then they COULD. That's bad business.

The housing market has gone through the roof, but no one talks about them being unfair. Inflation is going up, and we're paying less for gas now then in the late 70s.

I think they're doing what they do. To lower prices, everyone needs to use alternate methods of getting to the places they need to go.

Answer 8

you have to remember that oil is not a renewable resource. if they lowered the price against the market, then demand would skyrocket and the supply would go down. again, they are making a lot of money, but if they drop the price then people are just going to suck up the oil twice as fast.

Answer 9

Your kidding right? There the biggest thieves in the world

Answer 10

NO! Just look at the bonus's and profits. That is our money.