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Oct. 28, 2005 "Exxon Mobil, the world's largest oil company, said yesterday that its third-quarter net income jumped 75 percent, to $9.92 billion. Its profit in the first nine months of this year - $25.42 billion - already equals its full-year earnings for 2004. This year's sales, which topped $100 billion in the last quarter, are expected to exceed those of Wal-Mart." "Another oil giant, Royal Dutch Shell, reported a 68 percent jump in profits yesterday, to $9.03 billion. Chevron is expected to post a profit of more than $4 billion today." The above is an excerpt from the online version of the New York Times. What this story shows is the out right lies told to the American people from the oil and gas industry. That’s right. OUT-RIGHT LIES. First lie-we have to raise the price of gas because of the high price of oil from the middle east. I’v stated befor, I’m not an economist, I don’t have a math degree, I don’t have a business degree and I’m not a rocket scientist, however, I’m also not an idiot. I do know that if it cost you more to acquire a product to make another product, and you raise prices of the finished product to reflect the rise in price of the original product, you don’t post record profits. As an example you own a restaurant. The price of chicken (for chicken soup) goes from 1 dollar to 2 dollars. You calculate you can make 10 servings of chicken soup from one chicken, so in order to offset cost you raise the price of a bowl of chicken soup 10 cents to offset the higher cost of chickens. Now the 9.92 billion dollar question. Are you going to post RECORD PROFITS from the sale of chicken soup? NO. you will certainly have higher earnings as will be reflected in the higher price of a bowl of soup but your profit margin will remain the same. Simple logic. Second lie. The hurricanes damaged our refining capabilities so we have to raise the price of gas to reflect this. Once again, a line of pure unadulterated CRAP. Once again, if you have to raise prices to repair damage, then your profit margin is offset by the cost of repairing that damage. On another note, did anyone notice that about a week befor the story about record sales and profits the price of gas did start coming down. Is anyone else seeing this as a blatant attempt of advertising and attempting to generate public good will? The same thing happened a month or so ago when that drug company got sued because one of the drugs they manufacture caused heart attacks. Suddenly we had commercials on T.V about how this drug company cared about everyone and was working hard to discover cures. Both companies are guilty of the same thing. Its called damage control. I’m just a simple sort of guy. So,to the oil and gas industry. Quite lying to me. Quite coming up with some bull story about why you’re raising the price of gas. Just tell me “look moron, we have you by the short hairs. You have to drive to work, to the store, so we’re raising the price of gas to fatten our wallets and to make us wealthy men.” Same thing goes to politicians. I won’t like it any better but at least I can say your being honest. ------------ Email Tracey Stevens: phoque62@hotmail.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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