Stossel Guest: In Terms Of Profit, "Oil And Gas Companies Actually Don't Do All That Well"
May 31, 2012 11:02 pm ET
From the May 31 edition of Fox Business' Stossel:
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This figure is in regards to "finished product" (i.e., the gasoline that comes out of the gas pump). But "finished product" isn't the only thing the oil companies do. This information is suspiciously missing from the above "myth dispelling".
- What the percent profit of the average oil and gas company is for all of 2011, for the last fiscal quarters, or for the first quarter of 2012.
- Who all meets the criteria of "average oil and gas company". Does it include, say, a company which produces a mere 200 barrels a week? A company which has only so-called under producing wells? The much hammered BP? Petroleum pipelines, contract drillers, etc.?
- Assuming "average oil and gas company" means a company that is in both the natural gas and oil business, what would the profit percentage be if natural gas were excluded from the company's financials? I don't know about you, but I don't go to the pump to get my aged sedan filled with high test methane. The price of natural gas has plummeted in the last year due to a glut caused by shale drilling. T. Boone recently got out of the natural gas biz because, as he explained in an NPR interview last week, there is no money to be made.
2. Note to Fox graphics department: if one reads the slide as written, it states the profit of the average oil and gas company, not the average profit of oil and gas companies. Or maybe that's what you intended, you sly little devils. Oh, what imps!
3. Stossel, ever the upright and frank journalist, doesn't mention to viewers the source of the 6.2% profit figure. The source is hidden in the first slide. Looky. In the lower right hand corner is the tiny, tiny, tiny acronym API. Why gosh, it's the completely disinterested and above board American Petroleum Institute, a name you can trust for not massaging data about its own industry. I kid.
4. Subject: John Stossel, master of sleight of hand. 6.2%, 6.2%, it's all relative. But not relevant. The undefined "average" oil and gas company? Wrong subject. This is from an article defending oil and gas company profits. Your text to link here...
FWIW:
A. The article laughably attempts to compare Big Oils profit margins to, e.g., brewers. I can live without Bud, but not gasoline in my car.
B. Alcoa's profit was 1.2% last year. Walmart's was 3.5%. Chevron 10.5%. Occidental Petroleum 27%. Source: Fortune.
"In Terms Of Profit, "Oil And Gas Companies Actually Don't Do All That Well""
Answer !
The Federal Government and We the Hard Earning TAX PAYER , Need to Subsidize the Oil Companies .
So that We, the Tax Paying American can Pay Less at the Pump !
Stossel ? How can I pay more in TAXES ? To have Big Oil Reap My Environment , so big Oil can Earn a decent Wage ?
That sounds like socialism. Is Stossel pro-socialism now?
Also, are you only referring to finished product?
Now it's proven. You really think we hate rich people just for being rich.
Hint: Scrooge didn't become poor at the end of that story, he stopped being a dick.
A society that blames it's poorest, weakest, and least powerful is a society in decline trying to cover the failures of it's leaders.
Now more then ever in America, a small number of wealthy individuals control more or our nation's wealth and hold more influence over legislation and media then at any other time.
Are you going to blame the poor? The working class? Minorities? College students? Teachers?
Seems like these Fox news talking heads want to blame everybody EXCEPT those who directly wield the most influence over our economy and legislators.
Or, put another way, a society that blames its most numerous.
For example, you can gripe about the housing meltdown in two ways:
"Those people who tried to live outside their means need better morals"
"The leaders of those 5 or 6 companies that broke everything should be watched and accountable"
Which of those 2 gripes is something that we can trivially do something about? Blaming something immobile reflects a desire to not fix the problem.
and steeve wonder why we accuse the left of hating the rich.
Maybe you should look that up.
FOX NEWS ... Up-Is-Down-R-Us
That statement is full of so much bull, I can see it coming out of my computer screen...
In 2009, Exxon made $30.5 billion in profits. They generated about #386 billion in revenue. They have seen their revenues and profits rise almsot every year for 12 years.It should be pointed out this does not include all the " paper companies" used to avoid paying taxes and to generate everrn more profit.
Imagine the drug supply chain being owned by one person, each step from manufaturing to distribution to the point of consumption makes a profit for the cartel. Oil is the same, Exxon gets money to pull the oil out, they get money to move it, they get one to refine it, they money to mnove it to market and money at the pump.
Mr Stossel is using deceptive reporting and arguement to perpetuate a false meme. To claim the Oil companies don't make that much money at the pump is hiding the fast that they are the richest companies in the world. The most profitable companies in the world.
There is no place for broken ideas in the debate anymore, it should be pointed out and that person should now be suspect when reporting.
I think of it more like paper production.
Stage 1: Paper company owns forest.
Stage 2: Paper company makes profit on the cutting down of some trees to make paper.
Stage 3: Paper company makes profit on transporting logs to mill.
Stage 4: Paper company own mill, makes profit on processing of logs into paper.
Stage 5: Paper company makes profit transporting paper to stores.
Stage 6: Paper company owns stores, makes profit selling paper to consumers.
Stage 7: John Stossel has guest from paper company to say that the amount of profit they make at Stage 6 really isn't that much.
Stage 8: Neocon idiots blast liberals and Democrats for "demonizing" paper company profits (which, of course, "isn't that much".)
Koch industries USA's largest paper company is very mad because the healthcare derailed this gravy train
Oscar uses software above ( probably got it from some oil company supported site), but I've seen this apples to oranges thing done with TV and other electronics, comparing profit margins.
I think I last bought a TV more than five years ago, maybe ten. What I spent on that TV is about what I spend on fuel in an average month. That's 12 tv's a month, 120 over the decade.And I don't get to wait for a sale, or decide if I buy that "TV" or not.
I think the GOP counts on people not being able to understand how different profit margins can be supported based on volume.
He quickly learns that being poor is not all it's cracked up to be.
Stossel and people like him should take a cue from Goddard Bolt. Make them live in the projects and having minimum wage part time jobs and see how long they can survive before giving up.
...I'll say that again. "Bob could find another job."
If that doesn't tell you their world view...
Oh, and it's Bob Cratchit's fault that Tiny Tim is ill. He shouldn't have had so many babies if he knew he couldn't afford to take care of them. And those workhouses? Of COURSE they're not "cheery" (that's the adjective Levin used) because otherwise, they would not work.
Okay, I need to stop now before I throw up.
Don't rely on Youtube's auto-transcribe closed-captions feature.
I know there are people out there gullible enough to swallow that narrative, but what I want to know is why do they swallow it?
"Keep the government out of my Medicare!!!" quoth the teabagging lady.
I called him on it, and asked why the poor have only themselves to blame while it's someone else's fault that he doesn't earn more money, and the reply I got was nearly unintelligible due to the anger at my audacity for questioning him.
I was even told I had no right to ask him that question.
Where does that mentality come from? I mean, it's not just the cognitive dissonance, it's the visceral anger that accompanies it that I find so perplexing.
When teabaggers say "the poor," what they mean is the blahs.
Great article, n'est.
As Taibbi makes abundantly clear, the teabaggers are nothing more than a bunch of overgrown two-year-olds who stamped their feet and threw a tantrum the moment the blah guy with the funny name got in the White House.
And, as is usually the case with two-year-olds, the tantrum subsided -- primarily due to the Kochsucker Bros. funding for teabagger events drying up {they're focused on getting their fellow one percenter Mittens Romney in office} . . .
I love that line. I wonder if Talibi had actually run into lowlighter while he was on vacation. He's been living off the government dole most of his life.
Sure, dude. And cold weather is proof global warming is a myth.
And cutting taxes increases revenue.
And it's only fair the poor should pay more in taxes than the one percent.
Welcome to Planet Wingnut! Enjoy your stay!
Amazing the cognitive dissonance these folks have in regards to protecting their corporate overlords.
A lot of accounting assumptions go into calculating a profit margin. A lot of depreciation, and overhead allocation and deffered this or that... things that may or may not represent REAL MONEY changing hands. And fine... those same accounting rules apply to the reporting of profits as well. BUT: $35 Billion Dollars is still $35 Billion Dollars. And at the end of the fiscal day, that still more money than any other company has ever made in a single year, EVER.
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IMHO
UTOPIA
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IMHO
UTOPIA
Or are they just paying their CEO's so much that it reduces their 'profits'?
AND... Oil prices are the lowest so far this year and most of last year and yet the price at the pump is higher.
Hahaha
It's only the MOST PROFITABLE business EVER in the history of this planet!