Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to The spice must flow.

Oil companies
Tom Brosz — (archived)

With oil, the cost of production and distribution is negligible and the premium paid to the owners is politically influenced and artificially high.

This is actually not true, and maybe you need to check this premise first. While the profits made by oil companies are large in pure monetary size, as a percentage of their overall income they are in line with many other businesses.

Oil companies actually pay far more in taxes and fees than they earn in profits.

Exxon took in $370.7 billion in 2005. Half of that went just for purchasing crude oil and other raw product. After other expenses, $36.1 billion was net income (profit). About ten percent.

Among those other expenses were excise taxes, income taxes and other taxes and duties that added up to $95.6 billion, or almost three times the amount of profit.

Those, of course, don't include taxes paid by consumers at the pump.

Data from Exxon corporate report.

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