Gas is over $3 a gallon for most people. American politics being what it is – a sickening mixture of class envy and populism – we need to find someone to blame. We need a subject for the two minute hate. CNNMoney.com very helpfully provided the information. But you might be surprised.
Who gets rich off $3 gas – who doesn’t:
Well, well, well…
Crude oil: This is the most expensive part of a gallon of gas. Of every gallon of gas $2.07 from every gallon of gas goes to producers of crude like Chevron (CVX, Fortune 500), BP (BP), and smaller outfits like Anadarko (APC, Fortune 500) and Marathon (MRO, Fortune 500), or national oil companies controlled by countries like Saudi Arabia, Mexico or Venezuela.
Crude currently trades around $110 a barrel, but breaking down the money in that barrel of oil is tough. Exploration and production costs, royalty payments – all a big part of $110 a barrel oil – vary widely country by country and project by project.
“It’s difficult to generalize; there’s a whole spectrum of costs,” said Ron Planting, an economist with the American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade group.
They can range from $1 a barrel to produce crude in Saudi Arabia to over $70 a barrel to find, develop and pump oil in the deep water Gulf of Mexico or off the coast of Algeria, said Ann-Louise Hittle, an oil analyst with the energy consultants Wood Mackenzie.
EIA estimates it costs U.S. oil companies an average of about $24 a barrel to find, develop and produce oil worldwide, but that doesn’t include costs like transportation, administration, or income taxes – which can be substantial. While Exxon made $40 billion in 2007, a 60% increase from 2004, it paid $100 billion in taxes and royalties.
American oil companies make a good deal less here than they do in other countries, but when they pump in other countries, they’re gambling that some nitwit like Hugo Chavez doesn’t steal their investments. When they gamble and win, the first thing that happens is American politicians try to pick up Chavez’ slack in that department. When they gamble and lose, nobody, but nobody lines up to bail them out like we do airlines or Amtrak, even though they indirectly to a great deal more to help people move about the country.
A hundred billion dollars. It’s enough to make you want some sharks with fricken laser beams on their foreheads, to go after those politicians.
