Oil companies need big profits for new exploration? How do you figure? I thought that's why we were subsidizing them and giving them all the tax breaks?

They don't need big profits, they're taking them because there's nothing you can do about it.

Chevron just reported profits of $4.35 billion for the quarter, and wall street was dissapointed because it wasn't as much as they expected. I guess that tells us where the biggest problem lies. We are absolutely nuts to allow these speculators to artificially inflate the price of oil. I might just have to go out and buy one of those diesel cars that run on vegetable oil.

http://www.nytimes.com/apon...

The heavy taxation on Gasoline and Diesel doesn't help either. Check it out. Find a place that sells Farm Fuel. This is Diesel for off-highway use only. It sells for under a dollar per gallon. #2 Diesel (automotive stuff) sells for close to the same price as regular gasoline. You know that it takes about 25% of the energy to make Diesel as it does Gasoline? Farm Fuel is not taxed. That's why it's so much cheaper. In the state where I live, the only difference between the two types of Diesel is that Farm Fuel has red die added to it. If you're caught burning it in a street vehicle, it'll cost you $1,500 for a first offense.

Oil companies are probably gouging on price, but the taxes are making it REALLY bad.

Oh, noooo!  Here's that terrible "liberal bias!!!"

It must be liberal bias, because Steve's logic and explanation is simple and absolutely incontrovertible.  I think I get it now.  It's liberal bias whenever someone tells an absolutely irrefutable truth that reflects poorly on the far right wing.

I am a huge fan of free markets, but free market economics only engage when markets are truly free.  Oligopolies and monopolies are not free markets.  It's funny how Kern County crude prices rise and fall in accordance with the Middle East -- even though there is no "political instability" that I know of in Bakersfield.  Maybe they figure the Sheriff's race will disrupt local oil supplies, eh?

I knew things were about to go too far when we began witnessing oil company mergers.  Oil company mergers, you say?  I thought that was going over the top.  But they're entirely real.

Sure, there are other industries that, by profit percentage, are riding a richer gravy train than big oil.  Real estate, for example.  But only in big oil is the livelihood of the entire world controlled by so few.

That is no free market.

Where I live, from $1.04 to $2.85 is more than 15%. It works out to more like 63.5% of the total cost. The oil companies aren't going broke, but our favorite Uncle is certainly getting his share. These taxes are supposed to pay for road and Highway maintenance. Drive around ans ask yourself if we're getting our money's worth on this one.

Diesel is so heavily taxed, to tap profets from Interstate Commerce. These costs are passed on to the customer and everything (due to the need for distribution) costs more.

You're right about the retail end. They're lucky if they can make a penny per gallon. Some don't even make that. They're living off of Beer and Cigarette sales.

So true about the razor-thin profit margins at the retailer level.  And I fondly remember the days when you could find an independent on every major intersection.

(And the resident mechanic...)

(And the free road maps...  I saved a collection of those now-collector's items...)

(And full service and nothing but full service...)

((Hmmm, there seems to have been a lot of job creation back in those days...))

(((Job creation that GOP economic policies of today have tilted the playing field against...)))

Automation has more to do with loss of jobs in gas stations and businesses like banks than a particular political party does.  Gone are the days when high school kids could get part time jobs pumping gas, checking oil, and washing windshields.  In our world of bigger, badder, better, and faster, we traded customer service and jobs for convenience and speed.

To some degree, banks are the same.  Kids used to get first jobs working as a teller in banks but now we use ATMs and drive up windows.  The last time I was INSIDE my bank was in Dec. when I set up an IRA.  It wasn't even for regular banking services.

It's always fun to blame the political party you don't belong to for ALL the lost jobs but, c'mon...when was the last time you saw anyone sit down with a legder and physically enter everything by hand.  And then add up credits and debits to see if they balance?  Now even that can be done in a matter of minutes...by computer...automatically.

Out of curiosity..how many jobs can you think of that most likely have been eliminated because machines can do it faster and probably more accurately?

"Most American consumers who fill their tanks at an Exxon or Chevron station are probably not aware that they are, at least by proxy, handing their money over to companies (both spawned from the break-up of Rockefeller's Standard Oil monopoly),  which at one time had close ties to IG Farben, the german chemical corporation which provided Zyklon B, among other chemical wonders, to the nazis." 

http://kernsux.blogspot.com...