Thread: What were the combined windfall profits of oil companies during the oil crisis?

Should the federal government declare a partial windfall profits tax from all US oil companies and distribute the profits to all the 51 US states based on populations in each state?

Or the money they paid their employees and stockholders? Either way, the companies did nothing wrong. "Windfall" is when a sudden gift arrives. The recent "profits" were not gifts but the result of Americans STILL wishing to have it both ways. (Notably, we're finally learning to drive less.)

I am more than a little disturbed by folks trying to make out that a publicly held company somehow did something wrong in providing a product we were willing to buy. The real cause of the high prices is actually the entrance of China into the oil market because their own wells ran dry. Increased customer + same supply = higher prices. Every economist knows that.

on their thumbs. On a side note - anyone find it interesting that the price decrease is coming at the same time that we are getting rid of Bush?

In any case, for the following oil companies, BP, Chevron, Conoco Phillips, Exxon and Shell, the combines profits for those eight long years was about 701 BILLION dollars - so almost the amount of money that the US has directly wasted in Iraq.

Exxon?s peofits have risen 250% while the economy has faltered. http://www.oilwatchdog.org/articles/?storyId=10827

It is an extremely sad state of affairs that the people we elected in this country have decided to do nothing after 8 years. I think the only reason prices are down now is that a widfall profits tax was guaranteed under Obama - imagine how much less pain we would have had if we wouldn?t have had Bush and a Republican controlled legislature....


If you look at this chart, you'll see how much the US consumer was being gouged. Notice the big spike in crude, with almost no movement in the gas price, because we were already being gouged...
http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx