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Woah, from a Texan that lives in the middle of the oil patch I have to chime in. Think about this, just who sets the price for the oil that is pumped out of the ground? Exxon? Conoco? No, the price is set by white collar speculators in the commodities markets based in Chicago and New York City. All the oil producers do, after spending billions in research geology, deep sea drilling platforms, dry wells, etc., is supply a product which is in demand by the United States, CHINA AND INDIA. Supply and demand my fellow travelers, we're not the only mass consumer any more. China now prefers a Buick over a bicycle and India manufactures their own line of automobiles. All those cheap plastic Chinese toys are made from petro-chemicals by the way.
What would a congressional investigation do other than make the 'man' squirm while giving testimony to a panel? Its easy to say Exxon made almost $40 billion in profit but as a percentage they made less than WalMart, equaled Apple and Merck. They also paid $30 billion in taxes. Not only do we hungry Americans import oil but we also import GASOLINE these days because we've not built a refinery since Jimmy Carter was in the White House. We can thank Congress for that, not the suppliers of petroleum energy. We had a refinery fire in the local area last week, that shrank our already strained refining capacity thereby raising the price of all products. Couple that with not being able to search for domestic sources of crude thanks to our tree hugging representatives and one wonders why energy is not more expensive.
Sorry guys and gals for sounding bitter about fuel prices. When the oil market collapsed and prices fell in the 1980s and this area of Texas was destitute, whole families abandoned everything in place and moved away. For almost a decade here it cost more for the barrel than for the oil in it. Nobody called for investigations because American Airlines fails to lower their ticket price when the price of oil falls.
Rich, just to clarify, those countries are not importing but EXPORTING the oil to the United States. Canada is our number one supplier of foreign oil.
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