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

To: zonkie who wrote (78848)	8/3/2006 5:19:38 PM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 81568

Cheney's Energy Task Force = A Conspiracy To Loot the US Public and Our Environment. No wonder Cheney tried to hard to cover it up, defying several subpoenas.

To: zonkie who wrote (78848)	8/3/2006 5:45:05 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 81568

Most people agree that oil companies could sell their products for much less and still make a very respectable profit. I'm not sure whether most people agree with that or not. Maybe your right because most people probably look at the nominal price of gasoline, and don't understand the larger issues. They don't look at the real price and see that gasoline and oil aren't selling at all time highs. They don't know or care about places like India, and China starting to use more oil, whole use in old heavy users like the US continues to grow faster than production capacity. I'm not sure why popular opinion would matter in terms of determining the truth of the issue. It matters in the sense that popular opinion can produce political results, but if everyone thought the world was flat, it still wouldn't be. If you want to look at actual evidence, look at the margins. You might have a nine or ten percent profit margin in the industry. That's healthy but far from unreasonable. And that's with the current prices, the average margin in this industry is noticeably lower. If the companies can't get healthy margins during good times, than there is little reason for them to invest refinery capacity, or even exploration in to risky hard to develop areas.