Exxon made its money on the upstream side (Exploration accounted for 10B) Downstream side has very slim margins.

 

remenber, these high prices we see on the stock market is for high grade sweet crude. many, many refineries run sour crude which is damn near $80 less per barrel than sweet crude. refineries are still making tons of $$$$. another reason why gas prices are so high and deisel is even higher is because of supply and demand. other countries like europe rely almost soley on deisel, so refineries are changing up the process to make almost all deisel to export to other countries, thus making less gas to put on the market here in the U.S. so the gas prices stay high. your big companies like B.P. and Exxon are monopolizing the refining business because they drill their own crude and sell it, resulting in huge profits. it doesnt cost them hardly anything to make petrolium products, because they dont have to buy the oil.

 

yea it was like 12 billion dollers in PROFIT

 

Also a lot of places are adding ethanol to their gas. Either way we will never see it under $3 a gallon again.

 

I hate ethanol....

 

I am with her^. I kinda liked OK a little better when I saw a big sign that said No Ethanol. That was a nice sight to see.

 

Knock on wood, I haven't seen the Ethanol sign and I'm speaking of the E85.

 

And why do you think that?

 

$3.37 in OKC.

 

I think the um "middle eastern" people are realizing that if they continue to let the price of oil skyrocket that their bread and butter will dry up since it will be more financially viable to look for alternative sources of power therefore cutting the demand for gas and of course oil. All the hybrids and **** box econo cars that have been sold in the last year or so is not helping their business especially with the great reduction in the demand for gas over the last 2 months. Im not going to hold my breathe for it being a lasting change but I think it will continue to go down over the next few months then after the election who knows, heating oil in the winter always jacks things up.