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Exxon Mobil reports profits of $1B a week
BY JOHN PORRETTO The Associated Press

    HOUSTON — Exxon Mobil reported the fattest operating profi t in U.S. corporate history Thursday but took a beating anyway — from politicians railing against Big Oil, drivers bleeding cash at the pump and investors who expected more.
    The world’s largest publicly traded oil company turned a profi t of $11.7 billion for the second quarter, lifted mostly by meteoric crude prices. Its earnings were up 14 percent from a year ago.
    Total sales: $138 billion — roughly the gross domestic product of Hungary.
    Henry Hubble, Exxon Mobil’s vice president for investor relations, said the record profits “highlight the quality of our integrated business model and disciplined investment approach.”
    For the most part, the plaudits ended there.
    Despite their heft, Exxon’s profits were a disappointment on Wall Street, and the company’s stock slumped nearly 5 percent. Almost the entire energy industry was walloped by investors Thursday.
    European rival Royal Dutch Shell posted its own record profit across the Atlantic, with earnings of $11.6 billion. Its American depository receipts tumbled nearly 4 percent in afternoon trading.
    Growing investor apprehension can be found at the heart of what the oil industry does — finding and producing oil and natural gas.
    Exxon Mobil’s overall output fell 8 percent in the second quarter from a year ago — a significant blow for a company that generates more than two-thirds of its earnings from oil and gas production.
    For Exxon Mobil, which produces 3 percent of the world’s oil, finding new deposits of hydrocarbons is getting harder and harder. State-run oil companies like those in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela control about 80 percent of known global oil reserves. It’s difficult if not impossible for Exxon and its competitors to get any part of that oil.
    “It all comes down to production,” said Brian Youngberg, an analyst with financial services fi rm Edward Jones. “This is the second straight quarter production came in below expectations. Investors are going to be questioning when they can turn that around.”
    Exxon Mobil was not alone in the industry in posting massive profi ts over the past week.
    The reward? A broadening backlash from a public that is getting squeezed on fuel prices from every front.
    Unleaded gas cost $3.74 per gallon at a Mobil station in Milwaukee, where Jeff and Jennine Pynn of Putnam Valley stopped Thursday during a 10-day road trip. “It’s totally unfair,” Jennine Pynn said as she pumped $47 worth into a Toyota Highlander. “You really hope to see them not turn so much of a profit.”
    Dan Owens of Muskego, Wis., drives about 100 miles a day as a sales representative for a packaging firm. He called Big Oil’s profi ts “obscene.”
    “I’m all for making a profit — it’s the American way. But it’s another thing to gouge,” said Owens, 38,
SOURCES: Capital IQ; AP Department of Energy
shaking his head. “It makes me feel like I’m getting ripped off.”
    While the oil companies insist they’re trying to find new oil that might bring down gas prices, the money they spend on exploration pales compared with what they’ve spent in recent years on stock buybacks and dividends.
    In the most recent quarter, Exxon Mobil said it spent $8 billion buying back stock, versus $7 billion on capital and exploration expenditures. The company has said it expects to spend $25 billion to $30 billion on capital and exploration projects each of the next five years.
    In a letter to the five largest international oil companies released Thursday, some House and Senate Democrats demanded the companies spend more of their profi ts on U.S. production and renewable energy and less buying back their own stock.
    “Given today’s strong market incentive for expanding exploration and production, we can only believe that reinvesting your vast profits into the production of more oil and natural gas in the United States is a profitable strategy that will help our country decrease its dependence on foreign oil,” said the letter from Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Robert Menendez, DN.J., and Reps. Rahm Emanuel, DIll., and Ed Markey, D-Mass.
    The American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s trade association, said Big Oil earnings are not out of line compared with earnings in other industrial sectors.
    For example, the institute notes, Exxon’s earnings amount to about 8.5 cents per dollar of sales, versus 11.6 cents for the companies making up the Dow Jones industrials.
    “The oil and natural gas industry is massive because it has to be to effectively compete for global energy resources,” said John Felmy, the API’s chief economist. “The industry’s earnings make possible the huge investments necessary to help ensure America’s future energy needs are met.”

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Dems would kill the planet to save it
Charles Krauthammer
Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist.

    WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposes lifting the moratorium on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and on the Outer Continental Shelf. She won’t even allow it to come to a vote. With $4 gas having massively shifted public opinion in favor of domestic production, she wants to protect her Democratic members from having to cast an anti-drilling election-year vote. Moreover, given the public mood, she might even lose. This cannot be permitted. Why? Because as she explained to Politico: “I’m trying to save the planet; I’m trying to save the planet.”
    A lovely sentiment. But has Pelosi actually thought through the moratorium’s actual effects on the planet?
    Consider: 25 years ago, nearly 60 percent of U.S. petroleum was produced domestically. Today it’s 25 percent. From its peak in 1970, U.S. production has declined a staggering 47 percent. The world consumes 86 million barrels a day; the United States, roughly 20 million. We need the stuff to run our cars and planes and economy. Where does it come from?
    Places like Nigeria where chronic corruption, environmental neglect and resulting unrest and instability lead to pipeline explosions, oil spills and illegal siphoning by the poverty-stricken population — which leads to more spills and explosions. Just this week, two Royal Dutch Shell pipelines had to be shut down because bombings by local militants were causing leaks into the ground.
    Compare the Niger Delta to the Gulf of Mexico where deep-sea U.S. oil rigs withstood Hurricanes Katrina and Rita without a single undersea well suffering a significant spill.
    The United States has the highest technology to ensure the safest drilling. Today, directional drilling — essentially drilling down, then sideways — allows access to oil that in 1970 would have required a surface footprint more than three times as large. Additionally, the U.S. has one of the most extensive and least corrupt regulatory systems on the planet.
    Does Pelosi imagine that with so much of America declared off-limits, the planet is less injured as drilling shifts to Kazakhstan and Venezuela and Equatorial Guinea? That Russia will be more environmentally scrupulous than we in drilling in its Arctic?
    The net environmental effect of Pelosi’s no-drilling willfulness is negative. Outsourcing U.S. oil production does nothing to lessen worldwide environmental despoliation. It simply exports it to more corrupt, less efficient, more unstable parts of the world — thereby increasing net planetary damage.
    Democrats want no oil from the American OCS or ANWR. But of course they do want more oil. From OPEC. From where Americans don’t vote. From places Democratic legislators can’t see. On May 13, Sen. Chuck Schumer — deeply committed to saving just those pieces of the planet that might have huge reserves of American oil — demanded that the Saudis increase production by a million barrels a day. It doesn’t occur to him that by eschewing the slightest disturbance of the mating habits of the Arctic caribou, he is calling for the further exploitation of the pristine deserts of Arabia. In the name of the planet, mind you.
    The other panacea, yesterday’s rage, is biofuels: We can’t drill our way out of the crisis, it seems, but we can greenly grow our way out. By now, however, it is blindingly obvious even to Democrats that biofuels are a devastating force for environmental degradation. It has led to the rape of “lungs of the world” rainforests in Indonesia and Brazil as huge tracts have been destroyed to make room for palm oil and sugar plantations.
    Here in the U.S., one out of every three ears of corn is stuffed into a gas tank (by way of ethanol), causing not just food shortages abroad and high prices at home, but intensive increases in farming with all of the attendant environmental problems (soil erosion, insecticide pollution, water consumption, etc.).
    This to prevent drilling on an area in the Arctic one-sixth the size of Dulles Airport that leaves untouched a refuge one-third the size of Britain.
    There are a dizzying number of economic and national security arguments for drilling at home: a $700 billion oil balance-of-payment deficit, a gas tax (equivalent) levied on the paychecks of American workers and poured into the treasuries of enemy and terror-supporting regimes, growing dependence on unstable states of the Persian Gulf and Caspian basin. Pelosi and the Democrats stand athwart shouting: We don’t care. We come to save the planet!
    They seem blissfully unaware that the argument for their drill-there-not-here policy collapses on its own environmental terms.

Quoted from Kevin March

I just finished getting some pretty "cheap" gas.  Sorry to say, but a price on the pump of $3.899 is now considered "cheap."  It's called "The Pit Stop" in the Rotterdam Commerce Park.  The person manning the gate will be able to tell you exactly where it is, but if you go into the park and go straight down the side of all the buildings, it's down towards the far end on the left, just after you pass the end of the Railex building (which is on the right).  Beats the Cumby's on the other side of the bridge by $.04/Gallon.  There's no choice for higher test, but there is a pump there for diesel, too.  Just look for the big above ground tanks as you're going past Railex.

It's run by John Ray and Sons out of Troy.

Oh, and this is an un-manned pump with a credit card reader over by the diesel pumps.  Just follow the easy directions.

There's a map to the general area from 5 Corners at the following link...

http://maps.yahoo.com/#mvt=m&a.....%20Rotterdam%2C%20NY

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Save gas by closing all drive-through windows


First published: Monday, August 4, 2008

There is one way to conserve many gallons of gasoline. Close all drive-through windows. This morning there were 11 vehicles, idling in the line at a local coffee and doughnut shop, burning $4.25 a gallon gas for a cup of coffee.
     
This was just one coffee line of many. There are also lots of similar lines at fast food places, banks and other businesses, that add up to lots of gallons. I know one of the arguments against such an idea is economic, but I doubt that people will stop going for coffee, hamburgers, and bank transactions just because they have to walk into the building to conduct their business.

Conservation may not be the complete answer but it would go a long way to reducing gasoline usage.

FAITH W. OVERHOLT
Schenectady

Quoted from Kevin March

I don't know how long the TU held on to this prior to publishing it, but I mean really.  Gas prices have plummeted over the past week to some extent.  There's NOWHERE that you get $4.25 gas anymore, not even the evil empire (Exxon Mobil) is over $4.00 here in Schenectady County anymore.  If she's writing as a citizen of Schenectady, I suggest that she start looking around at prices.

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No replacement for oil — and we have plenty of it

    Does anyone really believe that the United States or any other country will be able to replace oil in 10 years when we have nothing to replace it? Why would we want to do that?
    Does anyone realize what other products petroleum makes besides gasoline? One 42-gallon barrel of oil creates 19.4 gallons of gasoline, but the rest is used to make some of the following: solvents, ink, footballs, eyeglasses, telephones, cameras, bandages, pillows, luggage, antiseptics, heart valves, cortisone, life jackets, tires, combs, umbrellas, vitamin capsules, tents, detergents, shampoos, anesthetics, dentures, artificial limbs, aspirin, awnings, sun glasses, cosmetics, plastics, soap, shoes, and there are thousands more.
    Why is oil considered the bad guy when it is vital to any thriving economy? Why did we start demonizing oil? It runs everything that we know. It is a natural resource. Yes, we had a major oil spill in California back in the 1960s, but we have had more natural oil seepage coming from the ocean floor that occurs every day.
    We need oil to live and thrive, and if nothing else we need it for national security. We need U.S. oil, not anyone else’s — and there is plenty of it, if only we were allowed to drill. Oil will be around long after our present population dies. It’s everywhere here in America, from sea to shining sea.
    So why are we not doing anything? Ask your congressmen, who left Washington for their summer vacation without an upor-down vote. This has been a 30-year problem where both parties have done nothing. But right now the Democrats are in charge and gas is $4 per gallon, and heating oil will be even more for the winter.
    The time to act is now and we need Congress to come back for a special session before the election. Please contact them by phone, letter or fax to make this happen.
    CORNELIA H. JOHNSON
    Rotterdam

Quoted from Shadow

The government has no business bailing out people who have made really bad decisions. We the people didn't share in the profits when the housing market was booming so we shouldn't have to pay for it's failures.

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Gas price decline: Day 25
Gas falls to $3.81 a gallon; remains above $4 in only 9 states, AAA finds.

By Kenneth Musante, CNNMoney.com staff writer
August 11, 2008: 6:58 AM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Retail gasoline prices fell for the 25th day in a row, a survey of gas station credit card swipes showed Monday.

The national average price for a gallon of regular gas fell to $3.81 from $3.818 a gallon the previous day, motorist group AAA said.

Gas prices have fallen more than 7% since hitting a record high of $4.114 on July 16, though prices remain more than $1 above year-ago levels.

Gas prices have eased substantially over the last 3-1/2 weeks following a sustained drop in the price of crude oil, gasoline's primary ingredient.

Crude prices rose overnight Monday as a conflict escalated between Russia and Georgia, a former Soviet republic. However, oil futures are still about $30 below the record $147.27 reached on July 11.

Ethanol: The price of E85, an 85% ethanol blend that burns cleaner than straight gasoline, fell 0.2 cents to $3.09 a gallon on average, AAA reported.

Ethanol is made from starchy plants such as corn and is more readily available in the Midwest, where much of the nation's corn is grown.

Ethanol runs less efficiently in so-called flex fuel vehicles that run on both ethanol and gasoline rather than just regular gas. As a result, a vehicle that burns E85 would pay $4.066 a gallon to get the same mileage as with gas, AAA estimated.

Diesel: The average price for diesel fuel, which is used in most trucks and commercial vehicles, fell to $4.537 a gallon from $4.557 the day before.

Because of its use in transporting goods, the price of diesel, which has risen nearly 55% in the last year, has helped drive up the prices of products and services.

State prices. AAA, which bases its survey on credit card swipes at 85,000 fuel stations around the country, found that gas remains above $4 a gallon in 9 states.

In Alaska, the state with the highest prices, drivers paid an average of $4.604, down from $4.63 a gallon the previous day. Hawaii, the state with the second-highest prices, saw average prices fall to $4.444 from $4.45 a gallon, and Californians saw prices slip more than a cent to $4.117 on average.

Missouri had the cheapest gas, with prices falling to $3.568 from $3.58 a gallon. Oklahoma was just a fraction of a cent behind at $3.569 a gallon, AAA found.

Drivers in Hawaii, the state with the most expensive diesel, paid an average of $5.33 a gallon for diesel. Diesel was cheapest in Missouri at an average of $4.276, according to the AAA survey.