Thursday, May 22, 2008

Big Oil could be profitable at $35 a barrel.

At a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil, the U.S. arm of Royal Dutch Shell, said his company could be successful with oil prices at $35 to $65 a barrel. "I think in a range — somewhere between 35 and 65 dollars a barrel — is what has been consistent in our ability to run a successful company," Hofmeister said.

That does rather make a mockery of the $135-a-barrel price today. The Big 5 are in front of the senate judiciary committee again today. They've been sworn in which means a high chance that they're going to commit perjury. The excuses so far today have included the same old "it's supply and demand" scratched record along with the usual lies. The simple truth of course is that it's mostly profiteering.

Exxon's compensation for it's CEO is $12.5M annually and they turned over $40.6bn profit last year. That's an increase of 400% in 5 years. Exxon still maintain that their profits are down and that the current price at the pump is nothing to do with their profits.

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1 comment:

Joely08 said...

I read a newspaper months ago in the early hearings of the oil heads. They claim that they make only 1% profit from each gallon of gas sold. Well, at $4 a gallon and billions upon billions of gallons sold each year, 1% is still a huge profit.