Exxon Mobil sold the equivalent of the value of all assets in Hungary. This is insane. It'de be nice if they spent just 10% of it on renewable energy. Instead they spend more on advertising they care for the environment than they spend in research of green technology!! The CEO gets paid more than that too! Shell Oil on the other hand, is spending BILLIONS on renewables research. Exxon, a measly $100 million...

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Exxon Mobil turns biggest US quarterly profit Thursday July 31, 5:37 pm ET By John Porretto, AP Business Writer Oil gusher: Exxon Mobil turns record profit but faces backlash from Washington and investors HOUSTON (AP) -- Exxon Mobil reported the fattest operating profit 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 profit 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 firm 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 profits 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, N.Y., 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 profits "obscene." "I'm all for making a profit -- it's the American way. But it's another thing to gouge," said Owens, 38, 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 profits 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, D-N.J., and Reps. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., 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." He noted about two-fifths of publicly traded oil and gas company stock is owned by tens of millions of investors through retirement accounts and pensions. The entire industry is not rolling in cash. Refiners, including Exxon Mobil, must also buy crude. The company's earnings from refining and marketing fell 54 percent in the quarter to $1.55 billion. Profits for Marathon Oil Corp., also reported Thursday, fell roughly 50 percent. The company said it may split itself in two, with one company focused primarily on exploration and production and the other on refining and marketing. Exxon shares fell 4.7 percent, or $3.95, to $80.43. After Marathon announced it may split off its refining operations, its shares jumped 9.6 percent, or $4.34, to $49.47. AP Writer Dinesh Ramde in Milwaukee contributed to this report.

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Good for Shell. Perhaps Exxon has a different business strategy then Shell? Why the fuck do you care anyways?

they're operating at a 9% profit margin big fukkin deal. they also paid over 35% of their gross revenue in taxes.

like Kapedan said, good for them. i remember in the 90's big oil was about busted and they were either dropping like flys or merging with each other to stay afloat.

why don't people make political hay out of corporations that operate at 30% profit margins like Yahoo or Microsoft? because today its all about demagoguing big bad oil and paying out the nose for gasoline as a fashion statement

They should stop putting on commercials trying to instill an impression they are actually investing in alternative energy projects, because $100 million is what? A university research department? Give me a break...

I'm not bombing on them for making a profit either, so don't you two jump to conclusions. If you don't think $12 billion profit isn't insane, then you're hopeless!

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Originally posted by Krypton They should stop putting on commercials trying to instill an impression they are actually investing in alternative energy projects, because $100 million is what? A university research department? Give me a break...

lets cut the bullshit Krypton. are you telling me that if you had the power you would make them spend more of their money on R&D or at least support Federal legislation to make them do so?

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Originally posted by Krypton If you don't think $12 billion profit isn't insane, then you're hopeless!

i think after paying taxes and all other expenditures, being told what to do with your profits is insane.

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Originally posted by Q5echo lets cut the bullshit Krypton. are you telling me that if you had the power you would make them spend more of their money on R&D or at least support Federal legislation to make them do so?

Never said that! But when I see a blantant lie, in my opinion, I'll point it out. No more f*ckin commercials spewing this bullshit that they are oh so caring about the environment, and they are working oh so hard at R&D of alternative energy. They CLEARLY ARE NOT! No more playing the Congressional Energy Committee like idiots. And never did I say the government should tell them how to use their profits!

But you know if I had my way, I would nationalize all oil reserves of this country. The oil would be ours. Drillers would drill. Sell the crude oil to a national oil company. That national oil company would then sell the crude to a refinery, and that refinery would carry on the distribution of the finished fuel product.

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Originally posted by Krypton And never did I say the government should tell them how to use their profits!

yeah but you'd "like to see 10% of their profits go toward renewable energy". wtf ever that means.

i have to assume your "renewable" reference is ethanol because Exxon/Mobile is a petroleum company. they're not a solar panel company or a wind turbine company...but guess what? they're not farmers either! and until the Federal government can get it's shit together on how they want to pipe the country for ethanol, ethanol will remain fueling around 2% of the market.

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But you know if I had my way, I would nationalize all oil reserves of this country. The oil would be ours. Drillers would drill. Sell the crude oil to a national oil company. That national oil company would then sell the crude to a refinery, and that refinery would carry on the distribution of the finished fuel product.

alright Chavez, then can we dispense with this "authoritarian" meme you like to vomit all over this board at the drop of a hat please?

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Originally posted by Krypton The oil would be ours. Drillers would drill. Sell the crude oil to a national oil company.

then we'd all be riding the bus because the current Congress will not drill to meet supply. you going to force them to do that too? good luck.

what would be the point then? we should just keep buying all our fuel from foriegn sources. we'll pay $10 a gallon and no one makes a profit. yay

another fantastic read from Krauthammer

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By Charles Krauthammer 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.

Last edited by Q5echo on Aug-01-2008 at 11:15

"Unleaded gas cost $3.74 per gallon at a Mobil station in Milwaukee, where Jeff and Jennine Pynn of Putnam Valley, N.Y., 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."

ffs, these kind of people are starting to peeve me off.

Is that even $1 a litre?

Unfair? Sheez, they should come down under or to any other country and pay our rates, we pay close to $1.80 a litre. How is that for fair?