There is lots of profit in gas

I saw an item on CNN that told of two gas stations in Atlanta, across
the street from each other, selling regular gas for $1.59 a gallon.
It awould appear these are the only two stations in the USA who are
competing. All around my area a few miles south of there, the price
is about $2.26. Or about 67 cents higher. I know one thing and
that is even selling it at $1.59, these people are *not* losing money.
I would suggest there is a more profit in a gallon on gas than most
consumers would like to think.

Earl...

How in the world do you KNOW they are not losing money.

If you would look at the wholesale price of reg gas you may be
in for a shock.

It is running at $1.80 a gal with longer range actually going
up.

This means that those two stations are losing $.20 a gallon just
on their purchase price. Adding the costs of operating the
station and you ave a probable loss of $.80 per gallon sold.

But let's move from gasoline for our car to natural gas for our
heating in a couple of months.

Back in the winter when it was costing our gas provider $15.50 for a
mmbtu contract of gas, they were charging us $1.79 a therm on our
bills. Now a contract costs them $4.90 a mmbtu and they are still
charging us about $1.00 a therm.

Earl...

And how much are you paying for the pipe to your house and the
cost of billing for your individual useage.

Are they separately broken out or just included in the average
price.

You actually do have a way to see how much profit the companies
are making. It is called the stock market. Look up your
supplier's return on assets/equity.

Now admittedly the current returns on Exxon are unbelivably
high, about 25% on assets. But as the international prices drop,
or the economy declines you can expect that to retreat
significantly. It does take a lot of money to build a refinery
or even buy a tanker.

Is this windfall profits ? Price gouging ? Grand theft ? Or just
the normal business practice of Big Oil and other pirates ?

Oh,well. They have to dig up $400,000,000 from somewhere to give
to Lee Raymond for his going away present from Exxon. Guess who the
turkeys are who are providing the cash ?