Oil Executives give faux testimony at senate hearing last week.I've been meaning to do a post on this for awhile, but I was having too much fun exploiting my new found ability to post eye candy.
Oil executives gave "testimony" before a senate committee last week defending their industry's record profits while the rest of us are digging for lint covered change buried between couch cushions to buy enough gas to get to work.
Unlike the executives from the tobacco industry who testified they did not believe nicotine was additive years earlier, oil executives were not asked to give
sworn testimony. That is, they did not take the oath, "I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Thus encouraging the telling of big, FAT, lies like the following from Lee R. Raymond, Chairman and Chief Executive Liar at Exxon:
"The industry's profits, measured as a share of its revenue, were no greater than those in other industries."
Well, sure, I bet the crack, heroin, and meth industries did not hesitate to rip off the consumer either.
Raymond followed with this gem:
"We are in line with the average of all U.S. industry," Mr. Raymond said. "Our numbers are huge because the scale of our industry is huge. How are these earnings used? We invest to run our global operations, to develop future supply, to advance energy-producing and -saving technologies, and to meet our obligations to millions of our shareholders."*
For those of you not fluent in corporate sleaze, Mr. Raymond basically said, "We are big, you can't stop us, and we are making our shareholders rich. Stupid you for not buying stock."
As to his claim that oil profits are average with U.S. industry, consider the following:
Since George Bush became President in 2001, the top five oil companies in the United States have recorded profits of $254 billion:
"ExxonMobil: $89 billion
Shell: $60.7 billion
BP: $53 billion
ChevronTexaco: $31 billion
ConocoPhillips: $20 billion
Meanwhile, gas prices continue to go up up up - no oil company seems to be turning their profits into consumer savings. So it would seem there is a direct correlation between record prices paid by consumers and record profits enjoyed by oil companies. As Americans shell out more dollars at the pump, the profit margin by U.S. oil refineries has shot up 79% from 1999 (the year Exxon and Mobil merged) to 2004."
-Public Citizen Nov 2005
79% profit is "average" now? !
You know what you oily fat greedy bastards? I'm a capitalist. I'm all for making a buck. Why shouldn't you charge what the market can bare for your product? If you want to cry "supply and demand" and use tragic hurricanes as an excuse for your greed, so be it. I'll see you in hell. But what pisses me off more than being ripped off at the pump is that you actually think my fellow citizens and I are stupid enough to believe you.
*Polly, a cynic who is fluent in corporate sleaze, expected the oil industry's greedy fat bastards to pull this crap the moment rain clouds developed in New Orleans. She did, in fact, purchase extra oil stock in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. However, like an idiot, she forgot to dump her GM stock - DUH! - and made no money whatsoever.
