$100 oil anyone?

 

Not commonly known, but true. Canada and Mexico are the closest (thus the cheapest) suppliers transportation-wise.

 

Why are you annoyed by the oil companies profits? Nobody cared when they were hit by the $10 priice in the late '90s. What annoys me most is my high heating and gas bills (immediate impact), my growing living expenses (perpetual impact) and my children's upcoming college bills (future impact). Believe it or not, it's all connected to the price of oil one way or the other

 

I'm annoyed because the price that we pay both directly and indirectly is related to the profit that the oil company's make.  I don't know the exact numbers but when they were paying $50 a barrel, we were probably paying the equivalent of $75 a barrel (i.e. a $25 profit).  Now that they are paying $100 a barrel we are paying the equivalent of $150 a barrel (i.e. a $50 profit).  Both are 50% mark-ups on their cost, and yet the oil company is doubling their profit, instead of saying, hey we were happy with a $25 a barrel profit and therefore we will only charge our consumers $125 per barrel instead of our 50% mark-up of $150 a barrel.  I just find it annoying that we are paying billions of dollars to supplement a war in the Middle East so that these same oil companies will be able to continue to make these profits for years to come.  Not only are we paying through the nose directly and indirectly for oil, but we are also paying through the nose in current and future taxes or inflation caused by these oil executives greed. 

If it were possible to survive without those mark-ups, (assuming that that's even true, which I doubt--not a shot at you personally, but the internet is extremely unreliable), why wouldn't a company reduce their prices and double their business? If you give me conspiracy crap I'm going to scream. Drilling new oil wells and all of the other things related to it (some oil companies invest heavily in alternative fuels as well, altough that could be a PR move) is expensive. Criticism of the free market aside (damn commies!), it's very, very efficient at making prices lower. If that is actually true/possible to be lower, they wouldn't survive.

 

This sucks, but everyone saw it coming eventually. Peak oil might f**k is in a few years anyway, so this isn't that big of a deal...yet.

 

Peak oil may be a distant problem. I did some research on it a few years ago and came across an article about the Russians drilling for oil above the arctic circle back in the '70s. They were forced to drill 40,000 feet wells (if I'm not mistaken) and were able to pump oil there. Aside from high initial costs and cold weather, production was normal. So it's possible that we still have huge oil reserves, theu're just too deep down there.

 

 

It is true that oil often is much less affected by price increases and instead other things are affected, but if your gas was cheaper, people would switch to your brand and stop using Exxon.