For the stock savvy.. Check this out.. wow..

Thats profit for 1 quarter for the third largest.. can only imagine what Exxon will announce. Its pretty staggering that with all the perceived shortages, this kind of profit is being realized.

http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/conocophillips-1q-profit-up-17-pct-on/n20080424094609990039

yeah......it sucks!

"Although we delivered solid financial results during the first quarter, unplanned downtime negatively impacted our performance," Jim Mulva, ConocoPhillips' chairman and chief executive, said in a statement.

In plain language - "we reamed the public and made obscene profits by closing our refineries to create a shortage of gasoline and drive up prices even further."

There is NO gas shortage.

JG!

"Daily production in the most-recent quarter averaged 1.79 million barrels of oil equivalent a day, down from 2.02 million barrels a year ago."

Not saying there is a shortage, because there isn't - I'm saying they reduce supply to justify charging more. Basically, they have us coming and going.

Further reason to nationalize or at least regulate the energy cartels.

Look who is in the White House and oil is at 120.00 barrel .I think every oil well in Texas is pumping today and Bush and his buddies are lining their pockets.

Puppets are on strings dude!

George and Dick are laughing all the way to the bank.

You know how to buy stocks don't you ?

Yep... its payday boys.

$27 per gallon when HE took office and $120 now? Not saying it's HIS fault, but maybe HE hasn't helped the situation.

I'm sure a war with Iran would help. Probably won't help you or me but will cetainly help those with defense contracts. Capitalism at it's finest (most corrupt)!

High prices are only going to hurt not help, I can not go back to farming with horses ,I need fuel to stay in business and I need cheap fuel ! What needs to happen is , people need to stop buying huge suv's and start driving smaller cars and start looking at ways to conserve . high oil prices also mean high fertilizers cost which means higher food costs but what the heck we can just import more food from other countries they have low cost fertilizer ( Human Poop ) Then we will all die from e-coli, Problem solved

It's the "Born on third, but thinks he hit a triple" mentality.

Hankster, show me where we are preventing the building of new refineries.

"The price of crude is factored by demand...period"

It's factored by supply which is manipulated by the likes of OPEC.

The low value of the US $ is the biggest factor in today’s oil prices. Don't forget that during G W's reign our dollar has lost nearly 32 % of it's value on the world market based on GDP per capita. In the mean time inflation has gone up over 25%. Oil is traded in US $ so the price has to rise as our dollar falls. It would seem more stable if oil was traded in Euros but it would still have gone up in US dollars. Oil is a commodity that is traded on the open market and its' price is driven by demand. Use less and the demand goes down and prices go down. Unfortunately we are not the only ones using oil and demand on the world market is not going to go down. Until we either find a cheaper alternative or oil prices rise to the point that currently more expensive alternatives will be cheaper than oil, prices will continue to rise.

On a side note if we had spent half the amount on research and development of alternative fuels as we have on the war in Iraq we wouldn't need to buy oil from OPEC by now.

That's true! Amazing but true!

World oil production is up over last year as is demand.

http://www.worldoil.com/INFOCENTER/STATISTICS_DETAIL.ASP?STATFILE=_WORLDOILPRODUCTION

That might need some explaining.. because its B.S - 6% is close to the margin your local Kwiki mart gets for selling you a gallon of gas. They report a whole bunch more than 6% increase in profit every single quarter, let alone annually. The "sales are so huge" because the price is so high.. not because they are selling that much more oil.. your just paying more for it. Sure, China etc is using oil now, but not enough to keep the graphs of cost vs profit vs usage.

The cost of harvesting oil has not increased. The cost to refine oil has not increased. The only things thats increased is the amount you pay for gas and the profits.. which are insane.

On the up side, I was always a guy who really didn't think about paying for the gas on a fishing trip, we just kinda always worked it out. Now days we are worse than 8 women trying to split up a lunch tab.. the calculators come out.

So I bought two barrels of refined product. Motor oil. For eight hundred twenty bucks. Of course there was a fuel surcharge in there too.

Does anybody still do LPG conversions for cars and trucks? The cost on natural gas hasn't risen nearly as fast as oil. It is only up 20% in the last year.
On the refining cost side of oil, natural gas is mainly use to crack the hydrocarbon molecule so the cost to refine oil into all the products has gone up at the same rate as natural gas.
If we could only figure a way to use all the hot air produced in D.C. we wouldn't have to worry about the cost of energy.

The fallacy by some on oil is they think of it as a free market when it is not. Heck, even bread (wheat) isn't a free market.

Rockefellers call for change at Exxon

http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSN3044627420080430

"Neva Rockefeller Goodwin, great granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller."

I'd hit it.. and have no clue what she looks like

Everyone run out and buy the latest copy of Mother Jones magazine - it covers all of these topics, and the future is not pretty.

Also, I saw on Yahoo today that Iran is switching to euros and yen for oil trading. Do you know who tried to do that last and get OPEC to go with him? Saddam Hussein. Right now you can get 5 to 2 odds we're going in with the troops

Ask JerryGarcia about the summer heat in the valley - he might remember through the haze of years and beers - the AC stays on! Swimming pools, drain 'em, we can have more freak X-Games crap that way. Which leads me to... the youth of our state seem to be tackling the fuel problem by riding skateboards everywhere.

Our state was created for driving, as far as I can tell.....

Could be why Bushco and pals tried to corner the power market....so many scams under such a dim wit.

I can remember pouring concrete pads in a trailer park where it was 90 at 7am. I can remember riding my Yamaha from Chico going up the hill to Cohasset and feeling like I was going to bake alive until close to the top the temperature would drop about 10 degrees.

JG-

It hasn't changed a bit.

Aunty-

A certain motorcycle "club" has a motto "Better a sister in a whorehouse than a brother on a honda."

One of our best fishing buddies is from Chico.. owns the pro steam carpet cleaners there. Actually lives in Paradise. Last I talked to him, he had bought a Harley and that was his new thing. Fishing was history.. we kinda miss that guy. We would meet him at Pyramid lake near Reno a couple times a winter, and he would come up here in the summer. Also went to Eagle lake a time or two with him. Good dude.

I could justify (somehow) spending the same amount of dough on a boat, but not on a harley. To each their own, I guess. Oops, that saying should be on another thread!

"If all Californians rode Yamaha's, we wouldn't be in this mess."

Nah, they'd be riding stretch Yamaha's.

Think stretch Hummer, then you'll be in the California state of mind (all residents of Berkley excluded from this stereotype, check with the local chamber of commerce for actual graft and corruption figures, taxes not included, gas or otherwise)

The Yamaha was close to 40 years ago.

I'm suprised you can remember ANYTHING from 40 years ago Richard.

Plans? It was already developed and built. Aunty, you really need to watch a movie called "Who Killed the Electric Car".

http://www.whokilledtheelectriccar.com/

40 years ago is fine, it's yesterday that is giving me trouble.

Just to add to our pain and misery, do you remember how much gas cost per gallon 40 years ago? Did you get Blue Chip Stamps with your fill-up? Imagine, using come-ons to get people just to BUY gas!

It was like a couple of dollars to fill the bike up.

Yes, I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone last September when we vacationed in Oregon. Not only was gas $.30 - .40 cheaper per gallon than california, some guy kept filling the tank for me... odd.