Oil Company Profits, Good for Mankind?
Hmmmm, how much profit is too much profit? I guess you have to ask yourself should a collections of similar companies profit at the cost of possibily crippling the rest of the economy? (Now, I'm not saying the economy is collapsing, but high fuel cost over a long period of time could drag it down. We shall see.)The oil companies were making record profits a year ago when gas was at $2.30 a gallon. Now at $3.00, they are making money by the barrel load. That 10% is now .30 per gallon when it was .23 per gallon and they're not doing any more work. That additional .07 is a huge increase in profits. (At $4.00 a gallon this summer, if we get there, that will be .40 per gallon for no more work.) Couldn't they just hold at .23 per gallon and be happy with more record profits? What ever happened to the word sacrifice? It's not like they'd go hungry or lose money. Ahhh, with multi-national corporation it's all about making money right now and to be damned with the future. Nothing should stand in the way of making a buck. It's our god given right.
We could start talking about issues of national interest. We're not talking about a jump in Ipod prices or some other superfluous thing. People need gas to get to jobs. This reaches into about every economic segment out there from clothes and food. It will ripple through the economy and will cause inflation. If that gets out of control, then we're talking recession. If it gets bad, depression. Our way of life goes into the dumper.
I know that the price of crude is not in the control of oil companies, but they could help keep prices down.
Also, I think that some of these shortages are manufactered by the oil companies because they have not built a new refinery in over 20 years while demand has grown. They have plenty of crude, but can't refine enough to get it to market, thus creating a shortage.
The war in Iraq and saber rattling over Iran hasn't helped. but that's a whole other ball of wax which I shall not open in this post.
People have seen this coming for decades, but our leaders, Democratic and Republican, have done little to prevent the coming storm. There have been leaders who have tried. People laughed at Jimmy Carter for wearing a sweater in the White House during the 70s. They also laughed at Al Gore when he said the internal combustion engine the greatest enemy of mankind. Hmmm, maybe we should have listened and seriously looked for alternative sources of fuel then. Bush is waking up, but is it too little too late? His proposals seemed to be aimed at energy sources that can be sold for profits, hydrogen and ethenol, with little money going into nearly free sources like solar, geo-thermal, wind and water powered generation. All of these sources should be seriously put on the table because one of these days affordable oil will run out. (Notice I say affordable because there's plenty of oil out there, but if you use up two barrels worth of oil through energy useage to get one barrel, then that's not very affordable.) We have to think beyond today's profits and make long term choices that will sustain us for the next century.
Scott
posted by Scott @ 7:51 AM
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