That graph is of reserves, not production. Big difference. The reserve numbers reported by some of those national oil companies are nearly worthless. They are not using generally accepted guidelines from the Society of Petroleum Engineers and the World Petroleum Council. From a production standpoint, there is no way that Exxon is 14th. My guess is that they are 2nd right behind Aramco.
Point taken, although I believe that the total world production numbers I quoted were also on a BOE basis. I’m used to quoting production statistics on either a BOE or MCFE basis. Furthermore, since the topic is nationalizing these companies, it is relevant to speak to their total production, not simply crude or crude plus NGLs.
I agree with your points, but disagre on the numbers. IEA has world production at 87 mmbbl/d (q1 08) which includes condensate, unconventional and NGLs. It does not include oil equivalent of gas production and LNG which the 4mmbbl/d figure for Exxon includes.
That’s why.
Moderator’s Note: Please remember to argue against the post, not the poster, and refrain from personal insults in the Great Debates forum.
Do you believe the rural and small town poor should live under house arrest without access to work? Because that’s what failing to maintain access to transportation has the effect of.
What big oil lobbies bribed congress for help create this mess. Shouldn’t they bare some of the burden of fixing it?
Or do you believe companies are aren’t responsible for their selfish greedy immoral actions?
Note, but just curious but isn’t “again with the terrible understand economics” a personal comment too?
I thought that’s what the war in Iraq was about? 
First of all, it wouldn’t be “eminent domain”. The government could conceivably bring sanctions or force the breakup of oil companies under antitrust legislation.
Except of course, your proposal is nonsense and does indicate a basic lack of understanding of economics. It is ridiculous to think that the US Government could seize enough producers of a commodity product that mostly comes from overseas and then provide it to consumers at a discount.
I’m not a Mod, but the reading comprehension thing is something they usually get you on around here. From memory, I’ve seen several warnings in the past when it was used. It’s more insulting to say someone doesn’t know how to read than that they have a poor understanding of economics.
-XT
True and fair I guess.
Fine. I expect that someone will subsidize my living any day now, because I am in that category. Boy, that sounded really stupid, didn’t it? Imagine that. That’s because it is. Nobody owes me a living. It is my responsibility to adapt and overcome.
I’m sure you have evidence of this, right? Or is bribe now code for “campaign contributions”? If so, I think you’ll find that your pet causes are guilty of bribery as well. And since Congress cannot control economic forces, there’s nothing that they can do to fix it except getting a grip on their free-spending ways. They control the purse-strings, remember?
Given that companies are comprised of stockholders and employees, few of which you would characterize in that fashion, not to mention the fact that companies do not owe you anything at all, I would not characterize oil companies as selfish, greedy, or immoral. You can withhold your consent for their actions anytime you want to simply by getting a nice pair of running shoes.
“Selfish greedy immoral actions” is an appeal to emotion. Your anger doesn’t affect the economic situation one bit, and if this is how you’re thinking now, in a few years you’re going to be positively apoplectic when the economic situation is worse. I would suggest a more dispassionate approach in the future.
FWIW, I apologize if you took that the wrong way. You seem like a good guy, you have something interesting to say, and I hope you stick around, but still, the economic argument that you advanced was just fundamentally at odds with our current situation. As I said before, refining capacity simply isn’t on the short list of problems driving the high price of gas, and price controls are just a horrible idea for many many reasons. But other than that, your posts are great!
Valero’s making excellent profits huh? Sounds like you don’t have a clue. Valero’s 3/31/08 quarterly profit was a 54% reduction from its 12/31/07 quarterly profit which was a 55% reduction from its 9/30/07 quarterly profit which was a 43% reduction from its 6/30/07 quarterly profit. Did you get all that? Sounds like a pretty terrible trend.
It’s not the Job of Exxon to provide transportation nodes to get you to work or fix the world’s problems. You have elected officials to do that.
The mess of not having a good supply of oil is directly related to politicians who stopped oil production off the coast of Florida, Off the coast of California, from Anwar, and from Nevada (to mention a few locations). This represents 117 billion barrels of oil. So instead of being environmentally responsible and taking charge of our own oil production we rely on 3rd world nations to do whatever they want to the environment to get oil for us. The end result of which is a dependency on their production. We are at the mercy of outside forces and that is spelled $130/barrel. The alternative to being gouged by the Saudis is to go without.
Since the Oil companies aren’t making much profit then it’s tough to pin the stupidity of Congress on them. If you take try to increase taxes against a 9-11% return on investment then there is will no longer be an incentive to stay in business. Exxon is not obligated to loose money. They can simply reinvest stockholder money in another venture.
Environmental issues aside I think there is some sense in keeping US oil in the ground and using up everyone elses first. Certainly at some point it would make sense to start getting after them.
Based on the past environment history of the oil industry it was probably wise to keep them out of those places. Today, projects like BP Wytch farm demonstrate that the industry can do things right when they have the will/possibility of nut sack removal.
I think that $11,700,000,000 is way, way too high. But I have the answer: Break Exxon up into two companies, Aexxon and Bexxon. Problem solved, each company will now have a profit of only $5,850,000,000, which I think is fine. But if you still think that too high, just break those two companies into two more companies, and so on, until their net profits suit you.
Hope that helps.
If we wait until all the other oil reserves are used up technology will have caught up and it won’t be necessary. We need the oil NOW. People are having problems with inflation NOW.
Based on your philosophy we will lose all the tax revenue from oil mined from our own country. That money would be lost for research on future sustainable fuel sources and instead will go overseas to investment consortiums who in turn will be able to use that money to buy up local real estate. Again, money will flow out of the country instead of being reinvested internally.
Paul Volker said it best: “in the long run, we’re dead”. What he meant by that is that you cannot just plan for the future, you must also plan for the present. The United States has 117 billion barrels of off-limits oil reserves located in ANWAR, off the cost of California, Florida and states such as Nevada. These are known reserves. Lets look at the reality of it. ANWAR is another name for Alaska. We are already mining large oil reserves there and have a coast to coast pipeline in place. The only difference between current oil production there and “ANWAR” is a line drawn by a politician on a map. To the left is oil production and to the right is a zone where caribou will burst into flames the moment their habitat is disturbed. The only problem with that is caribou can’t read a map and don’t know the line exists. There is no rational reason not to fully utilize a pipeline that is already in place. Lets look at Florida. The state tourism board is against offshore oil drilling because of the potential of an oil spill. Cuba, on the other hand has been drilling since 2002.
We need to utilize our own resources so we can benefit from the revenue and reduce independence in the short term. The tax money from this can be earmarked for research for the long term.
Per my comments in post 94 where I said you can’t force a business to loose money, I would like to point out today that Mobile is selling off it’s retail operation due to poor sales. They will no longer have the backing of a larger company. If and when these stations are purchased they will be on their own.
I don´t think we disagree and you misunderstand my philospohy (my fault, didnt explain it clearly). My point was simply, in the past, it was correct to keep the oil companies out of those places due to aforementioned using up oil elsewhere and the industries past inability to take loss prevention seriously. (I work in the industry and have seen the consequences of some of the past horrific errors in terms of safety and environment).
Today, the US needs the oil, so it is time to reevaluate and get after the resources that have been held in reserve. On the environmental front, the penny has dropped in most international operators and loss prevention is veiwed as economically and morally the best way forwards, hence my example of wytch farm, and look at THUMS offshore Long Beach , the advances in directional drilling that makes pad drilling economic with the subsequent lowering of the drilling foot print impact, total fluids containment as standard, efficient zero impact ways of dealing with cuttings, low emmision generators coupled with high efficiency AC drive systems, CO2 sequestraction, zero flaring well test systems, the list goes on, and on. Add in the generation gap in the industry that I think probably helps with a more loss prevention minded group of people in charge, and the gradual ejection of dinosaurs like Brown from BP, who single handly trashed a good operator with a low cost screw the consequences approch, and the industry should be in a better place not to fuck things up.
OK rant over, really, I agree with you.