blood money
boy is a great time to be exxon mobile. record fourth quarter profits of 10.7 billion usd, that easily exceeded modest projected earnings of 8.4 billion usd and a friend, in the president, that is more than happy to wage war on behalf of your interests. it must be nice to get those bonus checks knowing that only 2241 american soldiers are dead and 16549 wounded (not counting scores of civilians throughout the middle east). yeah, go exxon mobile!
posted by robb | 1/30/2006
4 Comments:
I hate to spark controversy, or come off as defending the president in any way, but this oil giant profit issue is very complicated and double edged. It was bound to happen, with or without the war in Iraq. It takes millions of years for oil to form, and we are using it up over ~150 years, so essentially, there is a limited supply to us. Exxon is mostly profiting from supply & demand. The hurricanes didn't help this, messing up the terminals where the oil is imported, as well as our domestic production, and most importantly our ability to refine it into fuel, for which we have absolutely no spare capacity. But before the hurricanes, last summer we were having trouble getting enough oil imported (because OPEC didn't have the spare capacity to sell) to satiate our needs. Back to my point, if they don't re-invest that money into alternative fuels and start considering themselves an energy company rather than an oil company, they won't be around much longer.
Also, Iraq has 11% of the world's known oil reserves (and we don't buy much from them). If we really were over there purely for oil, we would have attacked Saudi Arabia who has 26%.
Also note, the US was endowed with as much oil as Saudi Arabia. We have just used most of ours up already.
-SWS
i can only hope that we are in the middle east for oil, because otherwise we are fighting in vain. it is obvious that democracy (american style), which is our stated goal, is not a real popular concept in that region of the world (repeated failure in afghanistan and iraq) and no amount of bloodshed is going to change that. that being said, having direct access to 11% of the world's oil, that you may otherwise need to buy, share or lose out on completely, doesn't seem like too bad a silver lining to the war effort.
if oil is not a concern in our war within iraq, how is it that we have awarded contracts to haliburton to operate in post-war iraq before we have even found success in terms of bringing democracy and stability to the area? would it not make sense to allow the government and citizens of a free iraq determine how natural resources are allocated worldwide?
You say I only hear what I want to:
I don't listen hard, don't pay attention to the distance that you're running
To anyone, anywhere
I don't understand if you really care, I'm only hearing negative: no, no, no
So I turned the radio on, I turned the radio up
I think it is Lisa Lobe, but Lube would have been more appropriate considering the subject matter.
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