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Surprise! More politician grandstanding on energy policy
Posted: Tue May 17, 2011 12:37 pm
by dissent
It's worth reading this R-Squared
essay in full.
a couple tidbits -
Robert Rapier wrote:Government Gougers
The price of gasoline is composed of four components. The largest component of the price is crude oil, 67%, followed by federal, state, and local excise and sales taxes on gasoline sales, 13%, refining expenses, 11%, and distribution and marketing expenses, 9%.
Important to note here is that governments already make up the second largest component of gasoline prices — well ahead of gasoline profit margins for oil companies. So if the oil companies are greedy gougers, what does that make the government? I guess it is fortunate for the governments that they don’t have to issue quarterly ‘earning statements’ on what they ‘earn’ from higher gasoline prices, because we would see them already earning more on gasoline than the oil companies, and yet demanding more.
and
Here I have summarized Senator Schumer’s “no-brainer”, and the reason why Chuck should be kept as far away from energy policy decisions as possible. Decisions like this are one reason our dependence on foreign oil has increased from one presidential administration after another since the 1970’s.
With all of the political double-speak and grandstanding around issues like this, is it any wonder why we don’t have a consistent, coherent energy policy in this country?
Re: Surprise! More politician grandstanding on energy policy
Posted: Tue May 17, 2011 12:52 pm
by null0010
I'm seeing that the government is responsible for 13% of the price of gasoline and that oil companies are responsible for 87%. Unless there is something I'm missing.
Re: Surprise! More politician grandstanding on energy policy
Posted: Tue May 17, 2011 1:08 pm
by Lothar
null0010 wrote:I'm seeing that the government is responsible for 13% of the price of gasoline and that oil companies are responsible for 87%. Unless there is something I'm missing.
The oil itself is responsible for 67% (ie, that's the raw cost of that much crude).
Oil companies are responsible for 20% more, which includes all of their refining and distribution costs. Only a fraction of that 20% is profit.
The government is responsible for 13%, virtually all of which can be thought of as pure profit.
The key point here is that certain government blowhards have been complaining about oil company
profits, even though the government generates much higher
profits from oil than the oil companies do.
Re: Surprise! More politician grandstanding on energy policy
Posted: Tue May 17, 2011 1:12 pm
by null0010
Who decides the cost of crude oil?
Re: Surprise! More politician grandstanding on energy policy
Posted: Tue May 17, 2011 2:49 pm
by woodchip
null0010 wrote:Who decides the cost of crude oil?
OPEC and speculators
Re: Surprise! More politician grandstanding on energy policy
Posted: Tue May 17, 2011 5:41 pm
by dissent
you might find
this helpful.
Re: Surprise! More politician grandstanding on energy policy
Posted: Wed May 18, 2011 11:36 am
by Ferno
don't forget lothar, that part of that 67% is the oil companies' profit margin.
Re: Surprise! More politician grandstanding on energy policy
Posted: Wed May 18, 2011 2:40 pm
by Will Robinson
Ferno wrote:don't forget lothar, that part of that 67% is the oil companies' profit margin.
Are we combining "oil company" like Exxon etc and the oil producing country that sells the crude to an Exxon?
Re: Surprise! More politician grandstanding on energy policy
Posted: Wed May 18, 2011 3:02 pm
by Foil
That's the question I have. Are we talking about refinery companies here, or drilling companies, or both?
Re: Surprise! More politician grandstanding on energy policy
Posted: Wed May 18, 2011 3:32 pm
by woodchip
Refineries are part of the problem only because there are not enough of them...thanks to all the regulations preventing new ones from being built.
Re: Surprise! More politician grandstanding on energy policy
Posted: Wed May 18, 2011 11:34 pm
by Ferno
oh no, there's plenty of refineries. the problem lies mainly with the speculators pushing prices higher than they really need to be. and will, i'm mainly combining the companies. the exporters are a different matter altogether.
Re: Surprise! More politician grandstanding on energy policy
Posted: Thu May 19, 2011 12:21 am
by Spidey
I think you both might be wrong…
(but Woody is probably closer)
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/d ... ining.html
Re: Surprise! More politician grandstanding on energy policy
Posted: Thu May 19, 2011 8:07 am
by dissent
Prices go up when speculators CAN get a higher price for a futures contract because some people are willing to pay MORE for a share of the available supply.
U.S. refineries do not produce all of the finished motor gasoline that we consume. especially since about the 70's, the trend on IMPORTS of finished gasoline
has been generally been on an upward trend.
Here's some data on exporters of gasoline to the US in 2007.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3887
The U.S. also
exports finished motor gasoline, lots of which
goes to Mexico.
Re: Surprise! More politician grandstanding on energy policy
Posted: Thu May 19, 2011 12:55 pm
by Ferno
and a lot of the US gasoline gets imported from Canada.
also, a lot of oil companies own the entire chain from pulling it out from the ground all the way to the pumps, making a fair bit of money from each step.
Re: Surprise! More politician grandstanding on energy policy
Posted: Thu May 19, 2011 3:27 pm
by flip
Quit telling the damn truth Ferno, you gotta be more 'reasonable'.
Truth is those Texas Oil Boys took over the world and nobody wants to believe it.
Re: Surprise! More politician grandstanding on energy policy
Posted: Thu May 19, 2011 9:19 pm
by dissent
LOL. ExxonMobil (of Irving, Texas), for example, controls only a small percentage of the world's oil reserves - most of the world's oil
is controlled by STATE owned oil companies.
Re: Surprise! More politician grandstanding on energy policy
Posted: Fri May 20, 2011 12:13 pm
by Tunnelcat
woodchip wrote:Refineries are part of the problem only because there are not enough of them...thanks to all the regulations preventing new ones from being built.
Guess what the real reason was that the Army Corps of Engineers opened the Morganza Spillway? Well, to protect those vulnerable oil refineries on the lower Mississippi, that's why. Can't have an oil refinery shut down by a measly 100 year flood can we? Especially since we don't HAVE very many refineries in this country to begin with. All those lowly farmers downstream of the spillway can rest assured that oil prices will stay down, even though their newly planted crops and homes are now destroyed.
Re: Surprise! More politician grandstanding on energy policy
Posted: Fri May 20, 2011 4:34 pm
by dissent
tunnelcat wrote:Guess what the real reason was that the Army Corps of Engineers opened the Morganza Spillway?
Really. So all this we've heard about
trying to minimize damage to towns downstream was all just a smokescreen.
Do let us know when Assange dumps the super-secret conspiracy memo, won't you.
If the refinery had flooded, you'd probably be ranting on and on about how they could possibly be so polluting, etc, yada-yada-yada .......
Re: Surprise! More politician grandstanding on energy policy
Posted: Fri May 20, 2011 6:50 pm
by Top Gun
Yeah, there were little places called Baton Rouge and New Orleans whose levees might not have been able to take the full surge of the river.
Re: Surprise! More politician grandstanding on energy policy
Posted: Fri May 20, 2011 10:38 pm
by Ferno
unless there's been a huge shift, oil from companies like Petronas doesn't really make it over here.
Re: Surprise! More politician grandstanding on energy policy
Posted: Sat May 21, 2011 7:34 am
by CUDA
tunnelcat wrote:woodchip wrote:Refineries are part of the problem only because there are not enough of them...thanks to all the regulations preventing new ones from being built.
Guess what the real reason was that the Army Corps of Engineers opened the Morganza Spillway? Well, to protect those vulnerable oil refineries on the lower Mississippi, that's why. Can't have an oil refinery shut down by a measly 100 year flood can we? Especially since we don't HAVE very many refineries in this country to begin with. All those lowly farmers downstream of the spillway can rest assured that oil prices will stay down, even though their newly planted crops and homes are now destroyed.
and of course you have evidence to back up your assertion, right?
I'm sure there's an "It's all Bush's fault" in that quote somewhere
