Shocking news!!

[MrFun]

Republican politicians from oil-producing states sympathize with the elite executives of the oil industry!!

But hey -- thumbs up for those Republicans who think differently, and are joining with Democrats in grilling these oil executives.


Oil and politics mix very well together unlike oil and water.

[MrFun]

[Sava]

hahah nobody cares

[JohnT]

God****ingdammit, I had a nice post refuting that dumb article and it ****ing got ****ing ate.

To summarize: Anybody who thinks that rising oil prices is caused by mergers is a freaking idiot. The fact that a ****** like Chuck Schumer is leading this "battle cry" is evidence enough of lack of merit. Is he running this year and trying to rally the Binghamton set? I've been there a number of times and, yes, those people are stupid enough to fall for this ****.

That's why nobody responded to this, MrFun - 'cause they recognize the idiocy inherent in the argument.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by JohnT
God****ingdammit, I had a nice post refuting that dumb article and it ****ing got ****ing ate.

To summarize: Anybody who thinks that rising oil prices is caused by mergers is a freaking idiot. The fact that a ****** like Chuck Schumer is leading this "battle cry" is evidence enough of lack of merit. Is he running this year and trying to rally the Binghamton set? I've been there a number of times and, yes, those people are stupid enough to fall for this ****.

That's why nobody responded to this, MrFun - 'cause they recognize the idiocy inherent in the argument.

So there are Democratic idiots as well as Republican idiots.

[Agathon]

Damn... I was itching to read Fun's tale of scoring with a girl.

[Sikander]

What we'd like to know is how you can justify making so much money?

Besides the fact that it is our duty to do so Senator?

[JohnT]

That's a great line!

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Agathon
Damn... I was itching to read Fun's tale of scoring with a girl.

sorry to disappoint

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Sikander
What we'd like to know is how you can justify making so much money?

Besides the fact that it is our duty to do so Senator?

The answer is as easy as 1-2-3:

(1) Mergers of oil companies and cooperation between the remaining companies have virtually done away with competition.
(2) Competition keeps prices down, and there is none.
(3) Oil companies make so much money because of lack of competition.

[Dinner]

The main problem is a lack of supply and excess demand driving the price increases with a healthy dose of uncertainity about future supply growth. That said the mergers have lowered the amount of competition especially in the refining business and that does harm consumers.

[kittenOFchaos]

Originally posted by Oerdin
The main problem is a lack of supply and excess demand driving the price increases with a healthy dose of uncertainity about future supply growth. That said the mergers have lowered the amount of competition especially in the refining business and that does harm consumers.

I said I wanted fries with that...

[JohnT]

Originally posted by Zkribbler


The answer is as easy as 1-2-3:

(1) Mergers of oil companies and cooperation between the remaining companies have virtually done away with competition.
(2) Competition keeps prices down, and there is none.
(3) Oil companies make so much money because of lack of competition.

No competition? There are 60 oil refining and producing companies in the US. I'm looking at a chart that lists the number of companies involved in the importing of oil and petroleum products during the month of December, 2005 - I got to 39 companies before I reached "D".

What country do you live in? Certainly not the US, where oil companies number in the dozens. Wiki (not exactly an exhaustive source) lists 35 US oil companies and a quick comparison between the two links shows that Wiki is sorely lacking in its tally.

C'mon. XOM is the seventh largest oil producer in the world, handling the flow of less than 3% of the oil on the global market. They're not even the largest refiner of oil in the country - Valero is.

They're a price taker, not a price maker. Aramco, at five times the size of XOM, is the one that "makes" prices.

Also, considering that 27% of XOM's gross revenues go to pay various taxes of one sort or another, perhaps the best way to lower gas prices (if that's the aim) is to lower taxes.

Lastly: note the baseline date - 1998. Then, oil prices were so low ($11/barrel) that they destabilized Russia, caused it to default on its bonds and devalue the ruble. To say that "oil company mergers" caused the price of fuel to rise since 1998 is, again, patently ignorant of the actual historic process.

[JohnT]

Originally posted by Oerdin
The main problem is a lack of supply and excess demand driving the price increases with a healthy dose of uncertainity about future supply growth. That said the mergers have lowered the amount of competition especially in the refining business and that does harm consumers.

Uh, not quite. The problem with refineries is not that there "aren't any" but that they're concentrated in LA and TX... where Katrina hit.

Today’s oil and gas industry is highly competitive. Some suggest past mergers are responsible for higher prices. The data do not support such claims. In fact, companies have become more efficient and continue to fiercely compete. There are almost 60 refining companies in the U.S., hundreds of wholesale and marketing companies, and more than 165,000 retail outlets. The biggest refiner accounts for only about 13 percent of the nation’s total refining capacity; and the large, integrated companies own and operate only about 10 percent of the retail outlets. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) thoroughly evaluates every one of our merger proposals, holds those mergers to the highest standards, and subjects the industry to a higher level of ongoing scrutiny. For decades, investigations of price spikes have consistently exonerated the industry of any wrongdoing.

http://energy.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=1223&wit_id=3528

Here's a PDF that lists refinery capacity by state: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/p...f/table_36.pdf

Here's the top refineries: http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/rankings/refineries.htm

[JohnT]

Hell, Charles Schumer isn't even on the Senate Committee on Energy and National Resources. This isn't a serious effort at anything other than pandering to voters.