Jessica,

I would like to thank you for a well stated point that not to many people know about. The profit margins in the oil business have never been great compared with other industries. They were AWFUL (negative? I can't remember) in the late 90's when oil was $10/barrel. Nobody was ranting and raving at that time about giving them a bunch of government money to subsidize their businesses. These companies made MAJOR investments in infrastructure and capacity - so more power to them to be able to make some money! The proposed windfall tax profit may be the dumbest thing I have heard come out of a capitalist country in a long time. As long as they are not colluding or fixing prices then they probably aren't doing anything wrong (at least compared to other industries that have a relatively few strong players).

We as Americans are not taking responsiblity for our actions on both a personal and national level - It's about darn time that we start.

Eric

 

Did anyone watch the News Hour two nights ago on PBS? The CEO of ConocoPhilips was discussing fuel prices. He said that for $3/gal gasoline, ConocoPhilips makes $0.10. That's not much.

 

I did watch that and that is what got me doing research and posting what I did. I never would just believe what he said, although, Jim probably would have nailed him had he spoken any untruths.

Jessica

 

I'm in the Microbrewed Beer industry now, and can't readily give profit margin numbers, but every extra cent goes into expansion purchases to increase capacity as we have grown at a 40%+ clip for the last 4 years. Next week I get to begin installing a brand new bottling line.

My past industry was meatpacking. Meatpackers profit margin averages 0.6%. This is highly sensitive to cattle prices. High cattle prices means ranchers and feedlots profit while meat packers lose. Low prices, ranchers lose, and meatpackers make less than a penny on the dollar.

If you've seen the contoversy over Horse Slaughter in the US for export to France and Belgium, I can say I've been there. The meat packer I worked for purchased a Cow/Bull/Horse kill in either Sealy or Palestine Texas (10 years ago can't remember which), and quickly ended the Horse kill operation. I saw the last 2 days of horse Kill before they shut it down. Didn't want to risk people thinking there was horse in their burger.

Pork industry is even lower, we had 6 pork plants and only 1 of the 6 made a profit in the 11 years I worked there. Part of a long term strategy to drive other pork packers out of business.

 

Is this what you're talking about? GM unveiled the concept car at last year's Detroit Auto show.