I'm sure all of those people will look back when they retire and say that spending $100+ per week on gas was a worthy cause.

LDM: you should read crash proof by peter schiff, i think u would enjoy the read

what? the fed. gov. makes twice the money per gallon then the oil producers do,states make even more.

its the feds stopping domestic increased production of petroleum products that force US company's to buy crude from OPEC.

for you young puppies,the Saudis confiscated the US company's that found,drilled and brought the Mideastern reserves to production. just like Chavez in Venezuela nationalized the US companies.

for someone to call it ''big oil'' shows how ply-able their thought is,if you want to make it ad call it ''big''...

did anyone notice that in last weeks Congressional hearing with ''BIG oil'' no one ask ''how can the gov. help to bring as prices back down to $1.50''?

Federal and state governments take about $0.80 of every gallon. Oil companies take about $0.10-$0.12 in profits. The oil industry averaged about 10.7% profit on its revenues last year. Microsoft was over 16%. Why is it a great thing when Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and My Space can make big profits, yet everyone cries when the oil companies do the same thing. Has anyone taken a look at insurance industry profits? Same thing.

Oil companies can't even open refineries in the United States anymore because of burdensome environmental and safety regulations anyone who know anything about the EPA and OSHA knows what I mean.

If you want to be pissed at something, be pissed that we have no idea what Iraq does with its billions in oil revenue yet we continue to pay for the reconstruction. What are the odds that the people in power in the new Iraqi government are taking the revenues for their own personal gain? Pretty good I'd say, as they sure are not spending it in Iraq. This is a travesty and another example of the ineptitude of our government, because it is too big.

Haha. You're right. The government is always there to wield the antitrust club or some other law or regulation in the event someone is too good at what they do.

Yawn. Quit looking for someone to blame. If you don't like the price of gas, buy less gas.

I love how you intentionally quote the Saudi meeting incorrectly to support your cause. They actually did increase their output which was followed by a call from the IEA for other OPEC producing nations to do the same. As for the speculators, they do exist, but they are given way too much credit. As the Bloomberg article points out, it's an easy scapegoat to blame speculators when speaking to an uneduated public that won't do their homework. I'd suggest looking behind the scenes at what the people with the money interest, such as the Saudis, are doing. For example:

"If speculation is part of the reason oil prices are so high, then why didn't the Saudis say they are investing billions of dollars to increase production capacity to 12 million barrels daily and that they will increase exports to bring down the price and head off conservation by consuming nations?"

" May 16 (Bloomberg) -- Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, will increase crude production next month in response to rising demand from its customers and a request by U.S. President George W. Bush to ease the strain of record prices."

To be fair, the increase wasn't a lot and prolly not significant, but it was an increase.

"audi Arabia's decision to increase oil output should be followed by other producers to curb record prices, the International Energy Agency said.

``It is far from being satisfactory enough,'' Fatih Birol, chief economist of the IEA, said in an interview at a McCloskey coal conference in Nice, France, today. ``We would like to see other countries join the efforts of Saudi Arabia and key oil producers need to make major investments to step up efforts.''

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=aSU1nzBoEMMc

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=awWr1bz4nKEU

oil was the original company punished by the govt for being too successful, see 'standard oil'.... Show me 'small oil'... Ticker symbol for 'big oil' too......regulations by our own government are actually what's preventing more refineries in America ftr. My mother in law works for BP and says they have wanted to build more here for some time. They did just addon to her refinery in Washington state as that is allowed but not as good as a new more efficient one from the ground up. They signifcantly increased capacity there but there are space limitations. Talk to your liberal congress people if you want to build them. The business is more complicated than a lot of other businesses and for people to understand.

The politicians are making their big theatrical diatribes against the oil industry's windfall profits because their constituents aren't happy about having to spend $75 to $90 or more filling up their SUV's every few days to get the kids to soccer and ballet practice.

The energy crisis represents more than just a slight problem for us. It's really not just about Joe Blow having to pay a little more for a tank of gas to get to work. Our whole society and supply/consumer system is predicated on gas (and diesel fuel) being a hell of a lot cheaper than $4 per gal.

If the government doesn't wake up and crank up some crash program to solve this energy crisis, our country is going to face hard times that will make The Great Depression look like a Sunday School picnic.....

I also agree that speculation is a major problem with the price and the countries that produce oil are more than happy to roll with it and wont do a thing to make prices go down. Its heroin and we are the addicts and they know it. Oil company stock prices have leveled out or I should say topped out so hopefully that will help signal something. They keep making record earnings but the price of their stock falls? Put changes into oil speculation on the commodities market and things would decline somewhat but you can't just do that. Its a catch 22. There are too many negatives there in a so called free market society.

would you guys get back on track? energy crisis, running out of oil, we are headed for something worse than the Great Depression, etc...

even at $4/gallon gas is still cheap compared to a lot of european countries.

if gas gets to like 7 or 8 bucks a gallon, then i would start to worry.

yawn.

1 - show me that any big oil company has been making unreasonable profits over a sustained time. making billions in profits is not unreasonable if it costs you tens of billions to make those profits.

2 - if you don't like the products price, don't buy it, stop being a whiny little girl.

 

Originally Posted by NUTZREALHUGE

even at $4/gallon gas is still cheap compared to a lot of european countries.

if gas gets to like 7 or 8 bucks a gallon, then i would start to worry.

not really when you consider in european countries, they don't drive nearly as far as most americans do on a day to day basis. in most of europe, the infrastructure is much more condensed, and the vehicles they are using over there don't consume as much gas as a lot of the cars in the US.

so yeah, europe pays 7 8 bucks per gallon, but they consume much less, so once again, it's all relative.

thank you urban sprawl

i think republicans and Gdub enjoy "big oil" since they rigged the 2000 election. Energy changes would've been widespread with a gore victory.