A poster to my former post about co-conspiracy in business says…

mctavishlane says:

April 11th, 2009 at 1:51 pm

Your argument is simplistic as well as full of holes.  There is no such collusion between the oil companies as to price fixing.  Oil is a commodity that is traded on world wide markets and the CEOs of Exxon Mobil, Texaco and British Petroleum don’t have that much control over the price of their product as you assert.  It is simple supply and demand.  The more of a product that is on the market,  the cheaper that product is on the retail end.  Conversely, if there is very little of that product, and the demand is high, it is more expensive.

Let’s examine one word by definition…

Profit ¹

Definition: Acquisition beyond expenditure; excess of value received for producing, keeping, or selling, over cost; hence, pecuniary gain in any transaction or occupation; emolument; as, a profit on the sale of goods.

If the “Global Market” decides that the price of a barrel of oil should be $84.00 instead of $78.00 you would have to increase your prices to cover the increase in the price of a barrel of oil and your profit margin should stay the same.

Why is it that the oil companies boasted the largest PROFIT margin in their history during the so called “Global Market” increase in oil prices?

Unless I have not been paying attention I don’t remember there being any talk of a oil shortage. The reason that oil prices were supposedly so high was because of the conflicts in the middle east.

By the way … there are oil tankers circling the gulf of Mexico at this moment that have been instructed not to offload  in hopes to push the price of oil back up.

How about that revolution ??