> >With oil prices at an all-time high and Big Oil > >reporting record profits this year has been exceptional. > > > Am I missing something? If prices for a raw input go up then the sale price > also goes up. However, provided the prices go up at near the same rate of > the inputs then profits should also remain basically stable. However, the > oil companies are pulling out profits left and right. Therefore, if they are > profiting then the retail price of fuel is artifically high and not high > mearly because of crude prices. > > I know its not this simple and that the theories of supply and demand weigh > in, but why are people (ie. the masses) not questioning what appears to be > collusion? >
It might be collusion (and if so, who would we question?), but probably not. Oil company product is crude oil, not gasoline, in many cases. Why do oil companies charge high prices for it? Because they can - there are many buyers who REALLY want that oil, and are willing to pay the price. Oil company profits have increased because their crude oil production costs have not increased that much, and the price they can charge has increased. Also, their exploration costs have decreased, since they are not investing in exploration. And why should they, from a business point of view? Searching for oil costs money, and if found may have the effect of reducing the price, and therefore profits, and stock price, and executive bonuses! A bad idea. And there might not be more to find in any case, so then it would just costs money to look, reducing profits, and so on. Even if they think there MIGHT be more oil to find, why invest in finding it now? Let the price and profits stay hig! h for a while. I hope this is just my cynical view of the oil business... _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://wwia.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel archives at Infoarchive.net (searchable): http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/
