I would like to report a crime.
Yesterday, $112M was stolen from US consumers. It will happen again today and probably tomorrow and that is on top of the $800 Million PER DAY that is being overcharged by oil companies in America alone, ACCORDING TO EXXON’S CEO.
That’s right, Rex Tillerson himself just testified to Congress that “based purely on supply and demand- should be in the $60 to $70 a barrel range.” The reason it’s above $100 a barrel, Tillerson explained, is due to the oil majors using futures contracts to lock in current high prices, and speculation that is engineered by the high-frequency trading of quantitative hedge funds.
Other disclosures were made in last week’s testimony that may interest you:
- The average cost of producing 1 barrel of oil was $11 (THAT IS ELEVEN, NOT A TYPO!); the average price of the oil in the marketplace–$92– some 8.5 times the cost of getting the oil out of the ground.
- The profits for the big 6 oil companies was $36 billion in the year’s first quarter. A large part of the $36 billion was used to buyback shares or pay dividends to shareholders.
- The deduction for intangible drilling expenses was given to the oil industry in 1960 when a barrel was worth about $15-17. So, why do they need this favor when oil is $100 a barrel?
Clearly there is no shortage of oil, the US has 1.75Bn barrels of oil in storage, enough to offset 186 days of imports (9.4Mbd) and 60% of those imports come from Canada and Mexico, not OPEC so our 1,750 MILLION barrels of storage would offset over 500 days worth of imports from the Middle East and Africa – even if it was TOTALLY cut off.
Nonetheless, oil shot up from $95 on Tuesday to $101 this morning, costing US consumers an additional $112M per day but that’s an UNDERSTATEMENT – when we buy gasoline at $4, we are paying $168 for a 42-gallon barrel and, of course, rising oil prices also impact our home energy bills and even our food. The cost, in fact is more like $250M PER DAY per $5 increase in oil – and that is just for the US. Globally we’re over $1 Billion per day that is removed from consumer’s pockets for each $5 over that $60-70 range that the…
