Wow. I speculated about getting ready for $5 per gallon gas here in the US a few weeks ago, but when you read that the oil companies are breaking the record for most profit in a single quarter – ever! For any company! Ever! It kind of makes you pissed off.
The New York Times reported today that Exxon’s Second Quarter Earnings Set a Record:
HOUSTON — Exxon Mobil reported the best quarterly profit ever for a corporation on Thursday, beating its own record, but investors sold off shares as oil and natural gas prices resumed their recent decline.
Record earnings for Exxon, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, have become routine as the surge of oil prices in recent years has filled its coffers. The company’s income for the second quarter rose 14 percent, to $11.68 billion, compared to the same period a year ago. That beat the previous record of $11.66 billion set by Exxon in the last three months of 2007.
Exxon’s profits were nearly $90,000 a minute over the quarter, but it was less than Wall Street had expected. Exxon’s shares fell 4.6 percent, to close at $80.43. (The company calculates that it pays $274,000 a minute in taxes and spends $884,000 a minute to run the business.)
Of course, as the oil companies would point out, their profit margins are actually pretty slim as a percentage of revenue, the absurd profits are merely a result of volume. Still, I’m going to have a really hard time feeling sympathy for them.
Seems to me that they could be spending a more significant portion of profits to develop higher margin, clean energy alternatives to help us actually try and clean up our planet. If they were, perhaps the shareholders wouldn’t be handing them a 5% beating for actually having the highest profit margins of all time.
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Not surprising, but Americans have been spoiled by low prices, and as mentioned above, still prices are lower than in the rest of the world. The oil companies have had a hayday manipulating prices and public opinion.
Yep, I heard Obama speaking today (via Ustream! cool!) and he was saying how they made such and such (horrible, evil) amount just while you were pumping gas! Arggghhh!
90K a minute…
Beats my sorry Adsense stats for sure :)
Kim:)
the only problem with your calculations is its the whole world but a fairly large amount of people like in 3rd world counties barley pollute but i do agree with the larger gas taxs
I just calculated that petrol, we don’t use gas in the uk, works out at $13 dollars a gallon here.
I would like to see the price of pertrol go UP in the USA and maybe, just maybe, we’d see less pollution from THE biggest polluting country on the planet?
26% of the world’s pollution from a USA population of just 301,139,947, bearing in mind the world population is 6,602,224,175 (aprox!), that makes the USA population 4.5%.
SIGN KYOTO !!!???
Stop complaining – I started riding a bike to work 9 miles from home. No gas, and I’m getting much stronger legs.
Taxes were over 2.5X their record profits. Shame on govenrment.
Exxon continues to be a less expensive alternative in my area. I’m glad they’re more efficient.
I agree that they should spend more efforts in developing clean sources of energy but it seems they are more interested in drilling for oil in coastal waters and the Arctic regions.
Agreed. I like the idea of taxing profits (that way they can’t pass it on to the consumer) and using those taxes to help fund alternative energy. Of course, that would only happen if we got an environmental president and congress…. will that happen? Not this year I’m afraid.