I typed this recently:
There must be some 'efficiency' to it that I'm not seeing: Although I
did see an article the other day showing (to the best of my
recollection) oil company profit margins at a historical high.
Where ARE the capital expenditures on infrastructure? Why aren't oilco
investors requiring the companies to invest in equipment to keep the
source of profits flowing?
I think the answer is linked to whether the infrastructure needed is
convertible (rapidly) to LNG, and 40-50 years later, some other
product used to literally 'fuel the economy'?. I think not. Some, but
there is quite a difference between liquid(oil) now and gas(LNG etc)
50 years from now.
Will the oilcos even be playing the enegy market 100 years from now?
Hard to tell, but I smell rats, and they act like they are leaving the
'ship' on a long-term timeframe... or waiting for that jumbo-sized
government bailout.
.
The PetroAge lasted 100+- years, and everyone is wishfully believing it
will last forever... or at least until the end of THEIR lifetime, and
screw the next generations... No wonder Americans fear their children.
They are being 'sold out', and they know it.
Worst case? They will be left with a nuclear wasteland to restore.
Best Case: With a little good fortune, agrarian-pastoral society will
flourish on earth again, and the greedheads, with all the evil they
inflict on humanity and the planet, will be dead, buried, and remembered
only as an example of the way NOT to live.
One can dream....
FINANCE-US:
Executives Cash In on War and Oil Bonanza
Emad Mekay
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34520
WASHINGTON, Aug 30 (IPS) - Top oil and defence industry executives in
the United States are raking in record personal profits on the backs of
the U.S. wars following the terror attacks of Sep. 11, 2001 and sky-high
oil prices, two think-tanks said Wednesday.
"CEOs (chief executive officers) in the defense and oil industries have
been able to translate war and rising oil prices into personal
jackpots," says the new report "Executive Excess 2006," a 60-page study
by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington and the Boston-based
United for a Fair Economy.
The report's authors say U.S. taxpayers are funding much of this bonanza
and faulted U.S. political and congressional leaders for not exercising
better and more thorough oversight.
"Americans across the political spectrum should be outraged by the sight
of executives cashing in on war windfalls," says report co-author Sarah
Anderson. "Unfortunately, partisan politics has stopped Congress from
effectively overseeing this war contracting free-for-all."
The study surveys all publicly held U.S. corporations among the top 100
defence contractors that had at least 10 percent of revenues in defence.
It found that the top 34 CEOs combined have earned almost a billion
dollars since the 9/11 attacks on the United States. This would have
been enough money to employ and support more than a million Iraqis for a
year to rebuild their country.
The defence executives' average compensation jumped from 3.6 million
during the pre-9/11 period of 1998-2001 to 7.2 million dollars during
the post-9/11 period of 2002-2005.
Among other startling facts revealed in the report is that in 2005
alone, defence industry CEOs garnered 44 times more pay than military
generals with 20 years experience, and 308 times more than Army privates.
The report names United Technologies CEO George David as the winner of
the top spot in executive profits after the Iraq war with more than 200
million dollars in pay since 9/11, despite investigations into the
quality of the company's Black Hawk helicopters.
Health Net's CEO Jay Gellert secured the biggest personal pay raise
after 9/11, a gigantic 1,134 percent leap over the preceding four years.
"The company owes its earnings growth to American taxpayers, who may not
realize they pick up a hefty share of cost overruns in the privatized
military health care system," said the report.
Halliburton CEO David Lesar made a modest 26.6 million dollars last
year, even though his company has been criticised for its links to U.S.
Vice President Dick Cheney.
"While Halliburton's future Iraq work is uncertain, Lesar will enjoy the
nearly 50 million dollars he has made since the 'War on Terror' began,"
the report says.
Oil company chief executives are also making three times the pay of CEOs
in comparably sized businesses.
In 2005, the top 15 U.S. oil industry CEOs got a 50 percent raise over
2004. They now average 32.7 million dollars, compared with11.6 million
dollars for all CEOs of large U.S. firms, the report finds.
The top three highest-paid U.S. oil chiefs in 2005 were William Greehey
of Valero Energy at 95.2 million dollars, followed by Ray R. Irani of
Occidental Petroleum at 84 million dollars and Lee Raymond, the outgoing
CEO of ExxonMobil, at 69.7 million dollars.
The lowest paid was Chad Deaton, CEO of Baker Hughes, at 6.6 million
dollars.
"The average construction worker at an energy company would have to work
4,279 years to equal what Greehey collected last year," the report noted.
Executive pay at U.S.-based oil companies also far outpaced pay at oil
companies based outside the United States, says the report.
International oil giants BP and Royal Dutch Shell, the second and the
third largest internationally, paid their top executives only one-eighth
what their U.S. counterparts received -- 5.6 and 4.1 million dollars in
2005, respectively. Both companies operate in the same global
marketplace as their U.S.-based competitors.
Since 1990, the overall CEO-worker pay gap in the United States has
grown from 107-to-1 to last year's 411-to-1, said the report
The study came out a day after another U.S think-tank, the Phoenix
Centre for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies, issued a
report defending oil industry profits by comparing the overall
profitability of the U.S. oil firms to other industries.
It concluded that "selling beer or bleach is more profitable than
selling gas and oil, even during times of 'record' profits for the oil
companies."
The Phoenix Centre, which looks into broad public-policy issues and
promotes a free-market approach, studied profits from companies like
ExxonMobil, Chevron-Texaco, ConocoPhillips, Shell, Marathon, Hess and
Sunoco.
"It may be fashionable to beat up on oil industry profits, but it
appears that these firms do bear at least some of the burden of high oil
prices," said George S. Ford, Phoenix Centre's chief economist and
author of the study.
"Our analysis shows that when gas prices are at their highest, oil
industry profitability is at its lowest," he said.
But the Phoenix Centre's position may be a lonely one in light of
reports that BP, which operates some of the largest oil field in the
United States, is under investigation by the Justice Department and the
U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission for possible manipulation of
crude oil and gasoline markets.
(END/2006)
