12 August 2008

ExxonMobil earns nearly $1500.00/second in profits...cool

Quick update on your blogger, I returned to school about two years ago; this time for A&P licenses to become an Aviation Mx Technician. School is done, liceneses are in hand and now I fix jets which is very cool. I really enjoy the new job (now about a year old), however still not enough time to blog as much as I would like, but I could not resist composing this email which I shared with some friends. Enjoy, and hope to be back at the blogging more soon.

Interesting blogpost here at this link from Autoblog Green....about ExxonMobils 2q statement. ExxonMobil earned nearly $1500.00 per second last quarter...cool.

For those (seemingly the overwhelming majority these days) ignorant of how our free capitalist economic system works; it should be understood that ExxonMobil is what is referred to as a large-cap(italization) corporation. Meaning that they require a LARGE amount of capital to even conduct business on a daily basis. Which means that, by definition, if they make ANY profit at all it will be a rather large sum of money per se. There are other examples of large-cap corporations.

Airlines are large-cap corporations. It is not uncommon to see $50,000 torque wrenches used in aviation to remove and install one type of fastener and one fastener only on the whole aircraft!! I am an airline mechanic, and I personally installed a $28,000 part the other day, it fixed the airplane and it is flying safely right now. Cost of doing business.

Drill bits for oil exploration cost tens of thousands of dollars and wear out over an eight-twelve hour shift. Rough necks get paid big money to be away from their family for weeks or months at a time to do dangerous and demanding work, over long hours, in brutal conditions. They earn it, each and every cent.

If you don't believe me get a shovel, and go get your own oil, as I pointed out in this blog post at BumperStickerPolitix over two years ago. This astute reader from Autoblog green makes essentially the same point here.

"...Exxon uses high tech equipment to drill thousands of feet into the earth, uses energy to pump oil out of the ground and pipeline it hundreds of miles to an oil tanker that then travels thousands of miles to an American coastal city, where it is cracked and refined into 70 some different versions of gasoline, most of them boutique types slightly different from each other due to state legislatures, [In refineries that were built decades ago and not designed for such production flexibilty -Spin] then it is trucked hundreds and frequently thousands of miles to a gas station on a corner near you, and you can buy this product for $4 a gallon. From a gas station so clean that most people will eat the chimichangas they sell over by the microwave...$1 a quart for gasoline. My Deer Park water comes from a hundred miles away, it is simply filtered and put into plastic bottles, but it is $1 for 8 oz and $1.30 a pint which is $10 a gallon for WATER! And people whinge and whine about Exxon selling a product that we actually need, as opposed to water we just prefer not to drink out of a tap. We deserve bad leadership if this sort of thinking isn't laughed down by normal, thinking adults..."

Well said. I'm not crazy about $4.00/gallon gasoline, but I also understand that for what it takes to get it into my tank; and the amount of energy in each precious drop it is a relative bargain. Let's look at it another way, let's examine the simple physics of the matter. Say your car gets 20 mpg. I drain your gasoline from the tank. Now you push your three thousand pounds of car the twenty miles.

I am willing to bet that after a few hundred feet at best of sweating and gnashing of teeth you would quite happily PAY me the $4.00 for a gallon of densely packed hydrocarbon energy so you can ride the next twenty miles with the a/c on, your tunes blasting, and you yapping it up on your cell phone, at a rate of sixty miles per hour, with GPS nav on the screen. We do take so much for granted.

What I find obscene is the ease with which Obama, Clinton and probably any day now McCain for that matter, talk so flippantly about taking MORE money from ExxonMobil, Valero, Chevron et al in the form of so-called windfall taxes. Another reader responding in the comments section made this very keen observation, that while ExxonMobil made nearly $1500.00 profit/second...

THEY P A I D $4114.00/SECOND IN TAXES!!!!!.

"...According to CNN, Exxon Mobil once again reported the largest quarterly profit in U.S. history Thursday, posting net income of $11.68 billion on revenue of $138 billion in the second quarter.
That profit works out to $1,485.55 a second.Buried in the story we also find that "In addition to making hefty profits, Exxon also had a hefty tax bill. Worldwide, the company paid $10.5 billion in income taxes in the second quarter, $9.5 billion in sales taxes, and over $12 billion in what it called 'other taxes.'"In other words, Exxon Mobil paid $32.361 billion in taxes in the second quarter, which works out to $4,114 in taxes per second. Another way to look at it - Exxon paid almost $3 in taxes ($32.361 billion) for every $1 in profits ($11.68 billion)..."


Then dim-bulb-socialist-wannabe-fools like Obama (Clinton/Pelosi/Schumer/etc) etc. have the sheer audacity to suggest that they take more so that these
socialist-wannabe-fools might waste it on some other manner of foolishness!!

Hey Obama stay out of it; beacuse if we have a photo-op where I hand you a shovel and command you to go get the oil for even a single days use, you too would be sweating and gnashing teeth in a matter of minutes and nary a drop of oil would be produced. Sure you can make three point basketball shots, but you don't even know where to start digging to get me a gallon of gasoline; let alone extracting, transporting or refining it. Your ability to make three point basketball shots is of absolutely no use to me.

Oh sure; as a matter of political shorthand, you know how to exploit/hold up the single mother clerk at the ExxonMobil convenience store as an anecdotal example of why you think we should socialize the entire medical industry. But you sir, don't even know where to begin to find the oil derived products she sells. Three point basketball shots are of absolutely no use to her either, regardless of how the mainstream media portrays it.

Another bit of foolishness Obama is harping on as of late is that of releasing oil from our strategic petroleum reserve, as a means of providing relief to the downtrodden. This is yet another flip-flop, but more importantly it is foolishness of the highest order.

Here is why.

Suppose Israel decides one day that they have had enough of Irans threats and other verbal abuse and calls their bluff, and commences to kicking the snot out of Iran. The straits of Hormuz (if you don't know where that is or why it's important google it) will surely become entangled very quickly.

It may take a few weeks for the US Navy to set Iran straight as to our understanding of free flow of goods in international waters. Meanwhile no crude comes through the straits. With the SPR in place our military is assured of the petroleum feedstock reserves necessary to effect this policy understanding on the hardliners in Iran in a very convincing fashion.

Or we could do it Obamas way. Squander the reserves to make the price of gasoline drop a few cents so you whine less when you fill up at the pumps. Our military doesn't have the fuel it needs to do its job. Very poor choice.

So do everyone a favor Obama, and stay out of it, and quite harrassing the do-ers out there that do know how to meet my energy needs!

Remember that this is still a free country and if you think ExxonMobil is making a killing, YOU can get in on the action by purchasing some of their stock. A little due diligence on your part would soon reveal that upon closer inspection; other industry sectors such as pharma, or tech will yield better ROI.

Just a little perspective, for your consideration. -SpinDaddy