I didn't think gas prices were a big deal, but if it hits $6.00 I'm gonna flip

Using XOM’s gross profit figures is distorting the argument here. XOM’s net income in 2021 was roughly $23B and in 2020 it was -$22B…prior 5 years it was on average around $15B give or take. Yes, they are making money but not $80B like people are being led to believe in this thread. Also, the majority of those evil profits are being paid out to shareholders (like your 401k) via dividends.

Gee, maybe Carters plan to break OPEC and be energy independent was right all along……

Speaking of OPEC . . . just a price raising appetizer for Asia and Europe. U.S. coming up.

reuters.com

Oil settles shy of $120 a barrel on OPEC+ deal, Saudi pricing

Laura Sanicola

Oil prices settled slightly lower after choppy trade on Monday, buoyed by Saudi Arabia raising its July crude prices but amid doubts that a higher output target for OPEC+ oil producers would ease tight supply.

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But in their infinite wisdom, Americans rejected turning their thermostats to 68 in the winter and resisted buying warm sweaters to foil that peanut farming communist's plan for sustainability! Just think of all the ugly solar panels and wind cancer that we avoided.

If there weren't people who live more than 40 miles from a store growing all of the food you eat you would starve to death in a few weeks.

The notion that everyone can just live in an apartment or their mom's basement in the suburbs is completely ignorant.

I never doubted for a moment that anything you say is based on anything but 15 seconds of googling...

I wonder how they doubled their profits from 2020 to 2021... Are you unaware that the world shut down in 2020? Put your little thinking cap on now and try to keep up. When everyone stops driving in year 1 and then starts driving again in year 2... Do you think you'd sell more gas in year 1 or year 2? Do you think profits would go up or down?

Do you have any idea how much money Exxon spent to make that $5.48 billion?

Of course you don't. You don't have any idea what you're talking about.

These gasoline prices are terrible! It's forcing me to leave my X5 M in the garage and take the claustrophobic little Macan most days. Boy, the ribbing I got at the Stacey Abrams fundraiser last week when I rolled up in a compact luxury SUV!

Then buy a Chevy Cruze that gets 40+ MPG. Or, if certain administrations weren’t trying to use as much gas as possible, 50 MPG. Oh, nope. Need my GMC Yukon so I can drive myself to the grocery store and then complain about gas prices while getting 6 MPG.

And, the majority of Americans should be eating less meat and grains that are primarily grown / raised in traditional “farmlands” and should be eating more locally sourced fruit and veggies. So, no we wouldn’t starve if people running some giant farm in Iowa packed up and moved to Pittsburgh.

One of the things I genuinely love about this site is that on it I can find people of all ages, locales and political views. I'm not saying anyone's mind is being changed by this thread, or that any of these posts are particularly enlightening, but it's nice that you actually get more than just one of "oil price high, let's go Brandon" and "oil company bad, GOP bad", which is how I read these.

I am, if anything, the most out of touch and enbubbled new-englander and this really is the last thing I check that doesn't feel like an echo chamber.

Anyways, I hardly ever drive anywhere, but I don't feel too smug about that just yet, as the price of oil affects basically everything else in the economy. Food costs more, anything that moves anywhere costs more. Yes, higher oil prices may eventually put us as a nation in a better place, but this is yet again another example where the path between where we are now and where we need to be looks like a disasterous mess, where the current administration has had to quickly shift its rhetoric 180 degrees. Other recent examples of this include our exit from Afghanistan, and the switch from "we need more stimulus" to an all-hands-on-deck fight against inflation.

America is highly dependent on oil, and many millions of people's lives get harder when the cost of it increases quickly. Biden realizes this, and also knows that his party is going to get absolutely hosed in the fall if it stays high. One of the reasons I voted for him was the hope that he understood or had people that understood that all of the rigs that were shuttered during covid (due to crashing demand and price of oil), all of the supply chains that get the specialized hardware, fracking sand, etc. need time and incentives to restart, and that oil companies are not going to stop minting cash (what company would) to help his presidency. Hindsight is always 20/20, but it sucks.

People keep going back and forth from politics to profits.

It’s neither.
It’s supply and demand.
Supply is low and demand is high compared to the last two years.

You can't get "locally sourced" fruit and veggies in half the country most of the year.

If people like you were put in charge of the food supply there would be billions dead by the 4th of July.

newsweek.com

Inside Seattle's CHAZ, Organic Tomatoes Grow in Social Distancing Circles

Protesters occupying the police-free area now known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone have started a gardening initiative in Seattle's Cal Anderson Park.

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Do you think gas prices are high in the US? In Sweden one litre costs 24 SEK (you do the math).

No. There wouldn’t be. Billions of people would die if cars were required to get 50+ MPG? How does that work? How many people die each year from pollution and climate change? WHO estimates 4.2 million per year.

40 miles to the store? Get a Tesla and some solar panels. Never fill up again and stop wasting money on electricity.

Here’s my proposal - for every mile per gallon your car gets under 50 MPG, there should be a tax of $1,000,000 plus the greater of $0 and 1% of your net worth (per year). Sorry soccer mom, you don’t need an X5 getting 20 MPG to pick up your kid from practice. Here’s a four cylinder sedan with a turbo putting out 120 HP.

crack pot, self entitled, virtue signalling loony lefty alert.

Thank you for lowering demand and being part of the solution!

My favorite is when people compare gas costs April 2020 vs. now. Immediate sign of being disingenuous or ignorant.

Poor little pupil doesn’t like hearing the truth. First site I found says that from 1991 to 2017, average MPG increased from 19.6 to 22.3 (other sites are in rough agreement, but many just show a percentage change chart, not hard numbers). This is asinine. We have the technology to make cars that get 40 or 50 MPG. Hell, I had a Chevy Cruze back in 2012 or so, that got 42 MPG (it was only 126 HP). Almost 10 years later, a 2022 Honda Civic gets that on the highway, but much less in city driving.

Yes, this means you’ll have to give up some HP. Yes, your 0 to 60 time will suffer. Too. Damn. Bad.

That’s not crack pot. It’s not self entitled. Nor is it virtue signaling or anything else you labeled it because you’re too f*cking stoopid to actually use facts or logic to make an argument so you resort to name calling.

Are you arguing just to argue?

Profits have doubled since a wconomic shutdown. What else has changed since then? Possibly prices at the pump have doubled? Also, those poor energy companies also made $30 Billion (just one company) in profits during that shutdown that crippled them so. Oh, and our government still gave them $80 billion in subsidies.

Are you aware of what profits are? That is how much money is gained above and beyond expenses by the way.

The point of exposing profits was to clarify that the president of one country, sans Putin and a war, has nothing to do with gas prices. When profits double at the same time prices at the pump double, it is pretty easy to see a cause and effect.

But far too many people want it to be the libs or the conservatives in every matter and the media push that narrative as well, accurate or not.

Can anyone provide a cogent argument as to why the average American driver requires a vehicle pumping out more than 250-300 horsepower? Not the farmer, the construction worker, the fifth-wheel RV owner. The average driver that commutes back and forth to work, or drops the kids at school and sports, or likes taking a Sunday drive.

You don't need 500+ horsepower to cruise the interstate at 80+ MPH or to have a fun vehicle to throw around curves on a twisty mountain road. But Americans keep falling for marketing to chase status and then complain about the price of gas.