Oil Industry Worried It Has Too Much Cash

[Jon8503]

President Bush has spent a lot of time lately pretending that energy prices are skyrocketing for every reason except the real one. He falsely claims his energy bill will solve the problem. He claims its about supply. But take a look at this little snippet from Fortune Magazine and you will see how this is nothing more than energy industry price gouging. As the magazine notes:

Exxon's "soon-to-retire CEO suddenly has a new anxiety: how to spend the windfall wrought by $55-a-barrel oil. By the end of April, Exxon will have a cash hoard of more than $ 25 billion. And if crude prices stay where they are, this geometrically growing bonanza could soon give Exxon more cash on hand than any other U.S. company...the cash is building at a remarkable rate. Each dollar jump in the price of a barrel of oil adds another half billion in earnings. Based on current prices, Exxon is accumulating more than $1 billion a month - even after allocating for dividends, share repurchases, and capital spending. If oil simply stays where it is now, Exxon's cash could approach $40 billion in 12 months. By then is expected to have handed off the top job--and the headache of what to do with all that cash."

Let me repeat that: Exxon and the oil industry have gouged Americans so much, that they now say they have a problem because they have too much cash. Yet, President Bush has yet to mention a single word about industry price gouging. That's what oil industry money buys more than anything: White House complicity when companies shamelessly rip off average citizens.

posted by David Sirota @ 11:23 AM

http://www.davidsirota.com/2005/04/oil-industry-worried-it-has-too-much.html

[K-W]

1. They will use that cash to end the republic.

Americans are so stupid. The reason gas prices have gone up is because the energy industry in the US is absolutely out of control, our instability has nothing to do with global instability and everything to do with our economic anarchy.

[Jon8503]

2. Yes, thinking the same thing. Where do you think that money

will go if it is not already on its way.

[K-W]

3. Im boggled by our economy at the moment.

The corporations are in the drivers seat, and corporations are blind drivers.

[Jon8503]

4. Yeah, makes me think the Corps are like a runaway freight train,

nothing to stop them or no one realizes it is happening.

[K-W]

6. Actually, when the US debt structure weakens

a corporation with alot of cash on hand will be in a position to purchase a great deal, one would assume other corporations. Corporations cant buy much else.

[Jon8503]

8. Or, it would be a good deal for some other world corp to purchase

a corporation with that much cash if you had the power and money as look at the case you would get with the corporation.

[K-W]

9. I dont know if thats possible.

I can't think of any corporation that could raise the money to buy a cash laden US oil giant.

A merger however is a different story. The last thing the US needs is more multi industry corporations.

As if that should even be possible, a multi industry corporation is a government.

[Sugarbleus]

5. Aww, the poor babies. Perhaps I could disabuse them of some

of that crushing wealth. Maybe I'll write a letter and ask them to fork over a wee bit of cash for a modest little home for my squeezed into 800 sq.ft of space family. :sarcasm:

What a bunch of bug fuckers these corporatists have become. I'm really starting to hate America.

[peacetalksforall]

7. Isn't that what they wanted and now they have it and they are

worried. They are sick.....how about endowing some to the unemployed, uninsured, and those without habitat and all meals? How about helping out on the roads? WHY NOT PAY FOR BUS TICKETS FOR THOSE WHO CAN'T AFFORD TO DRIVE THEIR CAR?