have Son-In Law who is in the business, a Driller.

He's been complaining about finding reliable, trained and experienced crew. And how much they have to pay to recruit, and keep them.

The oil biz has been deeply cyclic for decades, was employed by one of the largest Oilfield tool Mfrs in the early 80's. And watched a lot of tooling get shipped to India. Including the place I was working at. The entire plant, sans building. All of it, right down to the office furnishings with pencils still in the drawers.

If you remember, oil was about 10 bucks a barrel back then, a lot of folks in the biz simply found another career, and a lot of comapnies went under.

Costs haven't gone up, they've skyrocketed on the production end. In some cases, as much as 1000 percent in the last 15 years.

I see those absurdly huge profit numbers and get pissed myself. Then I look at the total gross of the biz and due some basic math.

Yeah, I cuss and kick when I fill up, who wouldn't. It hurts when you live on my income.

However, blaming all of it an the Oil Companies alone is not only useless, it's tunnel vision.

An example, how many times does the average barrel of oil change hands before reaching the consumer? And each trade adds to the price.

How much is hidden taxes, transport fees, and so on..........