Before getting too carried away in demonizing the oil industry, consider the following:
– Crude oil alone makes up 54 percent of pump prices. Refining for 20 percent. Retailing another 11 percent. Taxes for 15 percent.
– The latest published data for the third quarter 2007 show the oil and natural gas industry earned 7.6 cents for every dollar of sales compared to 5.8 cents for all U.S. manufacturing and 9.2 cents for U.S. manufacturing, excluding the financially challenged auto industry.
– Earnings within the oil industry rank well below Beverage and Tobacco, Pharma, Electronics, Computer, Chemical, Aero, Apparel, and Machinery.
– The oil industry has spent $98 billion in emerging energy technologies since 2000—almost 73 percent of the total $138 billion spent by U.S. companies and the federal government combined.
– Company stock in the oil industry is owned by virtually all americans: 29.5% mutual funds, 27% pension funds, 23% individual investors, 14% IRA’s, 5% institutional, 1.5% corporate insiders.
– The average effective tax rate (current taxes) of the top 27 energy companies was 37.1 percent in 2006 ($81.5 billion). The effective tax rate for the market as a whole is 32.3 percent, or 3.3 percent less than the top energy companies.
– Petrochemicals are used not only for liquid and gas fuels, but also lubricants, plastics, and fertilizers.
The relationship of Big Oil to our society at large might be considered through the words of the great philosopher Ayn Rand “I don’t build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build.” If you don’t like a product or service then it is the law of our wonderful land that you have a right to utilize your God-given talents to develop a better product or service. Complaining about the success of your industrious countrymen (be they corrupt or not) serves no useful purpose and fails to improve the circumstance of you or your community.
