On Fri, 01 Jun 2007 17:58:28 -0000, Jim Logajan
wrote:

Profit margins vary a lot by company and over time, but a mid-term (not
long term) average of ~8% seems a useful number.[2] Though Exxon managed
to get nearly 11% last year.[3]

Exxon had a good year in part because it owns a lot of refineries. In
the past, refineries have been a very bad business (the money was all
in extracting oil from the ground) but lately there's been a huge
shortgage of capacity (hurricane Katrina, Europe no longer exporting
much gasoline) so refineries are stretched to the limit.

When something is stretched, the price goes up, which is why Exxon did
better last year than say Royal Dutch Shell or Beyond Petroleum.

(For years, we have been importing gasoline from Europe. Isn't that a
hoot? They've historically tended to need more diesel than the
refineries could easily produce without exporting the lighter stuff,
and the excess came to us so the yuppies didn't have to have a bad ole
refinery in their backyard.)

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941-1942
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