Re: Oil profits: rent?

"Dan in Philly" wrote in message ...

> Oil companies have made big profits lately. How much of that is due to
> their owning oil wells? (as opposed to profits from refining,
> transporting, etc).

I checked the balance sheets of Exxon and BP (via yahoo) to see if any
assets increased tremendously inn value over the past couple years. None
did, so either they have no oil wells (or very few), or they don't mark to
market.

I'm just surprised that any firm can make big profits on the intermediate
steps (refining, transportation). I thought the oil well owners would
extract all profits by raising the price of crude.


Dan in Philly


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