Hugo's Citgo a No-Go

Tony said:
Really? I seriously doubt you're going to miss that 12 cents.
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Doesn't matter if the difference was only one cent.

Then again, you could argue that since BP gets more utility out of spending the extra 12 cents, then it's still an economic issue and hence does make sense economically.

But that would be a silly argument to pursue. I think we all know BP just meant "in bottom-line ($$) terms" when he said "economically."
 
Dave1001 said:
Have you seen the infant mortality statistics for Venezuela? We should not be accepting "low cost heating oil" from them -and Chavez as head of an oil rich nation should be held accountable for the health statistics of his country.
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And should we let the leaders of the American buisness community off the hook?

Record profits! Insane retirement packages! and the poor prepare to freeze this winter because they can not afford to heat their houses.

At least Hugo is offering some relief that is more than I heard from the mouths of the American counterparts...
 
SteveGrenard said:
In spite of the half-hearted noise being made about this, big American oil companies probably prefer the Chinese and Cubans to get this oil and make it dissapear inside China and Cuba. If we got it it would drive prices down.
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So you're theory is that the oil companies would rather have China acquire oil than themselves? So they've concocted a conspiracy to allow the environmentalists to prevent them from drilling because if Congress legalzed drilling, they'd have to?

If nobody wants drilling off of Florida -- particularly the Floridians -- then Congress wouldn't even be debating it. The only reason Congress is debating Florida Gulf drilling is because the oil companies are lobbying for it. This conspiracy makes no sense.

And oil doesn't "disappear" into China and Cuba. It's all part of the global oil market that affects prices.
 
I didn't say it was a conspiracy. Everything the administration and the oil companies have done is geared to raise, not lower prices. This is SOP for them.

Of course the oil disspears, particularly into China's economy. This serves to keep prices elevated. You don't honestly believe the oil China is drilling off Cuba will supply the U.S. or Europe do you?
You honestly don't know that when the US was paying less than two dollars a gallon for gasoline England was paying more than two pounds or almost five dollars? And I am going back 20 years.

Third Quarter 2005:

Politicians and other critics are asking why the industry allowed its refining capacity to tighten.

Exxon Mobil, the world's largest oil company, said yesterday that its third-quarter net income jumped 75 percent, to $9.92 billion. Its profit in the first nine months of this year - $25.42 billion - already equals its full-year earnings for 2004. This year's sales, which topped $100 billion in the last quarter, are expected to exceed those of Wal-Mart.

Another oil giant, Royal Dutch Shell, reported a 68 percent jump in profits yesterday, to $9.03 billion. Chevron is expected to post a profit of more than $4 billion today.
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http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1028-01.htm
 
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SteveGrenard said:
You don't honestly believe the oil China is drilling off Cuba will supply the U.S. or Europe do you?
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I do believe the oil they would have bought had they not drilled in the Florida gulf will depress prices elsewhere.

I can understand if oil companies want to create an artifical shortage by reducing supply. But if an oil field is to be drilled, it is irrational for them not to want to be the ones drilling it.

You honestly don't know that when the US was paying less than two dollars a gallon for gasoline England was paying more than two pounds or almost five dollars? And I am going back 20 years.
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Relevance?
 
It has a lot of relevance to the thieves at Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron. Rich or
poor Venezuelans can buy gasoline at fifteen cents a gallon.
 

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Please explain the obscene 25 billion dollars in profits Exxon has made this past year? And the
400 million its CEO made?
 
SteveGrenard said:
It has a lot of relevance to the thieves at Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron. Rich or poor Venezuelans can buy gasoline at fifteen cents a gallon.
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Because the Venezuelan government subsidizes gasoline. Whereas our government taxes our gasoline.
 
What its called is illegal price gouging and illegal price fixing which is what the OPEC Cartel actually is. By implementing it in the U.S. our government is
complicit in that.

And don't tell me its infant mortality. The price gouging has a ripple effect across every business and service including medical care.
 
SteveGrenard said:
It has a lot of relevance to the thieves at Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron. Rich or
poor Venezuelans can buy gasoline at fifteen cents a gallon.
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But it has no relevance as to whether oil that Cuba allows China to drill in the Florida Gulf for us in China will have an effect on global oil markets, which was the specific topic we were discussing.

Almost any factoid has relevance to somebody somewhere. That doen't make every factoid relevant to every discussion.
 
SteveGrenard said:
Please explain the obscene 25 billion dollars in profits Exxon has made this past year? And the
400 million its CEO made?
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I'm not sure if this question is directed to me or not. I assume it doesn't as the question has not obvious relevance to the issue we were disucssing: whether Chinese drilling in the Florida Gulf would have an effect on global oil markets.
 
SteveGrenard said:
And how can Venezuela afford to do that and we can't?
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Are you serious?

Because Venezuela is a net oil producer, because the government essentially owns all that oil, and because their per-capita AND gross oil consumption is significantly lower than ours. The people don't really understand that those low prices are really being paid for by themselves, in the form of reduced government services or higher taxes. But it's off balance sheet: the numbers never get added together and presented as a bill to the voter, because it's profits that are passed up, rather than profits that are taken away.

The US government, on the other hand, doesn't own the oil in the US, or the oil we need to import, there's no profit to forgo: it would have to fork out cash to provide a subsidy. And because our consumption is much higher, and because it would be even higher still if prices were dropped that low, the amount of cash would be enormous. And it would have to come from taxing people directly. Would you pay significantly higher taxes in order to get lower gas prices? That's pretty stupid.

Not to mention, since demand would be much higher at lower prices, you'd either have gas shortages or you'd have to increase capacity significantly, and the only way to increase capacity significantly would be to pay the oil companies even more money, which means subsidies would most likely exacerbate the problem you object to: high exective compensation for oil companies.

All this would be obvious if you had a clue about economics.
 
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