ninetyseven

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    • Mon Oct 13th 22:23 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Oil Industry: Farewell, Good Old Days
      Tony D. says: Isn't it strange that as we get closer to the Presidential election, the prices of gasoline and heating oil are dropping? Why do you suppose that is?

      I suppose that it is because the feed stock to refineries, crude, has decreased from ~$120/bbl or $2.85/gal, to ~$80/bbl or $1.90/gal. I suppose it is related to the end of driving season when gasoline always drops significantly each year. I also suppose it is related to a general slowing of demand as the economy contracts. You apparently haven't been paying much attention to how it works.
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    • Sun Oct 12th 22:24 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Oil Industry: Farewell, Good Old Days
      XOM is an integrated oil company and historically a very well managed one. People seem to think that the only reason it makes its gigantic profits is because of high crude prices when in fact reasonably high profitability numbers were being posted when crude was still in the 60's.

      As crude prices fall, refining margins tend to move higher. In the most recent era of rapidly escalating price at the pump, refining costs were not able to be passed through. Ask Tesoro, Valero and other pure refiners about that. With falling crude prices increased refining profitability must return or there will be a refining throughput contraction as those least able to compete will otherwise begin to falter.

      XOM will also be able to realize better margins in its chemical production which can be a huge profit center for them in times of lower feedstock costs. Vertical integration and conservative management has worked very well for them and I wouldn't count them out just yet.

      I suspect there will be a recognition this coming week that with very low debt, huge cash reserves, and an extremely strong balance sheet that XOM stock was only sold off because of the need to raise money for the redemptions of funds in the panic and it is a screaming buy at these levels.
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    • Sat Jul 12th 05:25 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Exxon Mobil: An Unwise Investment For Now

      During the clean up effort XOM hired any willing local person to put their boat and equipment into service at rates of a thousand dollars a day or more. They hired local clean up people at $17/hr and up-- very high pay at the time for their efforts.

      Fishermen that were affected by the oil spill were given a chance to be compensated the equivalent of 10 times their average yearly income for the highest 3 years in the prior decade to the spill. So every fisherman that was affected was paid 10 times what they were making unless they opted to seek higher compensation than that at a later date. Seems like a pretty fair deal to me.

      Exxon made millionaires of a lot of people there. They were fairly compensated, or had a chance to have been fairly compensated. Cordovans called themselves spillionaires.

      In 1989 Exxon paid 300 million to fishermen and in 1994 they paid an additional 287 million. Clean up and related costs were about 3 billion dollars.


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    • Sat May 17th 21:08 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The Importance of Stock Picking, Illustrated in Oil
      User 192279 states that you need to know the subject before publishing articles.

      For his enlightenment, cat cracking does not result in volumetric expansion, hydrocracking does.

      Hess is not a pure play company. It has both upstream and downstream aspects to its business.

      Refining moderates the effect of high crude prices on XOM's business if by moderates he means that it lowers the bottom line. XOM produces 40% of crude but then goes to the marketplace for the other 60%. There were a few recent good years in refining for XOM but that has not been the rule and certainly is not now.
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