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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (78367)	7/27/2006 12:18:37 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

"the 20 largest oil-producing countries produce about 57 million barrels/day, about 87% of world production of crude oil. More than 84% OF THAT (73% of the world’s total) is produced by countries whose GOVERNMENTS (read: politicians) have a say in the price of oil whether the government actually owns the oil companies or not. The USA produces 5.4 million bbl/day, the U.K. produces 1.8 mb/d and Canada,1.6 mb/d. So these 3 countries, where governments DON’T set the oil price, as huge as they and their oil companies are, produce only 8.8mb/d altogether, or only 14%of world production. Thus they’re swamped by the rest of the world’s oil-producing countries. Even if the “BIG OIL"companies in these free-enterprise countries could arbitrarily and unilaterally raise the price of crude, which they CANNOT, they’d be undercut IMMEDIATELY by the rest of the world’s producers, which are, all together, SIX TIMES BIGGER. (stats found at gravmag.com ) " polipundit.com Exxon Mobil might be the largest publicly traded oil company but it controls only a modest (single digit) % of the world's oil reserves and production. It has to buy a lot of the oil it later refines and sells as gasoline. But even if it didn't. Oil is worth somewhere around $70 a barrel today. That is what a barrel is worth whether it costs $10 dollars to produce or whether it was bought on the world market for $70. If you use up a barrel of oil when you make gasoline you use up $70 of value. If you don't gain additional profit from refining, distributing and retailing it than you won't do that, you'll just sell it for $70 on the world market.