the profits these oil criminials are posting at the expense of the middle class worker is nothing short of pornographic.

According to the oil and gas industry trade group (API), American refinery capacity expanded for the 10th straight year (1996-2006) -- expanding by 14% over that time period.

The way to defeat the environmentalists and NIMBY attitudes? Increase refinery efficiency and expand existing facilities.

Karl Marx couldn't have said it better himself!

Holy schidt batman! You actually wrote something with which I agreed!

widebody, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

I'm guessing none of on-ramp's clocks are ever right and if they are, it's because of a right-wing conspiracy.

If 10.5% ($39.5B/$377.6B) is pornographic, what do you call Apple's 11.74% profit margin or Google Inc's 25.9% profit margin?

that is ultra-mega-pornographic.

American has drifted away from Democracy and into Aristocracy, "government by the best individuals or by a small privileged class".or "a government in which power is vested in a minority consisting of those believed to be best qualified"

with King George at the helm


:eek:

I am going to go out on a limb here but I think Xom is a much bigger company then Google. Profit margin is a crappy indicator. XOM had an extremely good year last year, so it is difficult to increase on an already good product. Whereas Google might of (pure speculation) had a lesser profitable year. The reason for a 25.9% profit margin.

Disclaimer: College student.

How can you say that? The Google boys are richer than any American oil baron. And they were just regular grad school students ten years ago. Quite the opposite of aristocracy.

"King George" and anybody else in his Cabinet has a net worth a fraction of Steve Jobs' (another rags to riches story).

Sure, Exxon had a very good year in such a mature and resource-intensive industry. A 10% margin is impressive for Exxon. But it's hardly excessive. Probably quite average for Fortune 100 companies.

Thanks Rearden.

10% profit margin is average. Do the research. This is the only indicator that matters because it normalizes for scale. The earnings are so big because EM is so big. This is Economics 101.

On the subject of refining capacity, true, the US is a bit short on refining capacity, but this is not big oil's fault. Refining margins have been historically poor making grassroots refinerys a low return business. The majority of the increase in refinery capacity in the US has been as result of making incremental capacity increases (debottlenecking) at the existing refineries. Do a search at how much EM / big oil has increased capacity in this manner. You may learn something....

Like gay porn, the American people keep getting it up the..................

As a stock holder, I think they are doing a great job;)

That's an interesting perspective: on one hand, you make some cash from the stock, but at the same time, you pay more for gas, motor oil, plastics and pretty much anything else that moves by planes, trains, and trucks.

Exxon doesn't have much, if any, influence on the price of oil.

But gas prices have dropped a little since they made their last biggest profit ever. So it seems to me we're getting a little better bang for the buck or at least they are.

The folks in my office were *****ing about this yesterday. I asked them how they would behave if they were a CEO or Director of XOM...specifically, would you be in a for profit business or would you be a social service?

XOM is a publically traded company and as such their management has a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders for profitability. If you think they are earning better returns than their competitors, buy their stock. If you find them despicable, then boycott their product.

And as an aside, how about the other oil companies? Does the fact that they are smaller or less profitable make them better? Maybe it is time to resurrect that stupid email about boycotting XOM gas stations in order to bring down gas prices...

I don't know about all you guys, but I personally run my business with the intention of maximizing profits. That does include some philanthropic donations, which makes me feel good but also FROM A BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE also creates goodwill in my community, so it is not completely at odds with a profit maximization philosophy.

Damn bunch of socialists. Can't believe how many Porsche driving people are profitability averse.

Ed, don't bother trying to talk sense to some of the knee-jerks. You're being WAY too rational and logical, which doesn't work well here sometimes.

As a Chevron share holder, it's nice to get the dividends every quarter to pay for my gas.

However I do have a problem with gas refiners scheduling their maintenance every summer during the peak driving season. Electric utilities do the same thing. They lower output to drive up prices. I don't mind the profits, but manipulating/limiting supplies to drive up costs isn't really fair in my book.