The Daily Background

Ever since 2001 when President Bush took office, the oil industry has been making the largest profits ever, and Americans have been forced to pay more at the pump. In 2000, oil prices per barrel were around 23 dollars a barrel. These days they are well upwards of 70 dollars and there’s talk of 100 dollar/barrel oil depending on what happens in the middle east.

Oil giant Conoco-Phillips recently reported a 65% increase in profits over last year: they made 5.18 billion dollars.

Oil-mega-corp BP’s profits were up 30 percent over last year to a total of $7.27 billion in profits last quarter. That’s 55,000 dollars pocketed by the giant corporation every minute.

The world’s most profitable corporation, ExxonMobil, exceeded expectations and reported the second largest corporate earnings in all of history in the last quarter: second only to their previous highest record set only one quarter ago in the last reporting period of 2005 (think Katrina- they made a killing). That’s 10.4 billion dollars of profit this last quarter and more than 99 billion dollars in gross. In just one quarter. This is equivalent to earning $1,318 every second.

Americans are none-too-happy about the current situation, and according to a recent online poll, a plurality of Americans think that ExxonMobil exploits the public and wouldn’t invest in the company’s stock on principle.

Meanwhile, average Americans are shelling out the highest prices they have ever paid at the pump, according to a survey group.

Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg earlier this week introduced an amendment to rename the Republican energy plan (which has in large part contributed to the enormous profits by the oil companies by decreasing regulation thus allow them to profit more without having to worry about polluting the environment or protecting the consumer from price-gouging) after recently retired ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond who parted ways with the company along with a 400 million dollar retirement package.

The Democratic Senator from New Jersey formally requested that the Republican bill be called the “The Lee R. Raymond Oil Profitability Act.” Needless to say, it is highly unlikely that his amendment will last long.

Filed under: oil related, Z-TDB Blog