Cooper: While John won’t answer your questions, they are interesting. I’m on the periphery of the oil/gas business (I do seismic and blast engineering for refinery operations), and I’m also somewhat new to the business (coming out of defense biz). I hear a lot about Peak Oil and refineries having to work harder for less output.

Your question #2 caught my eye. Do you have this information? If so, I’d be curious to hear that number, as well as how it was derived. The second part of my question is driven by the fact that different oil companies (i.e. ExxonMobil, RD/S and BP) use different methodologies for the calculation(s), and therefore the variance between their respective numbers can be quite large.

Again, just curious, but it does pick at an interesting thread, especially in light of $5 per gallon gasoline.