DPazz

US Oil Companies Borrow A Page From OPEC's Playbook

So BP has a profit margin of around 8% and Citi has a profit margin of around 25%, but BP has "unfathomable" profits?

Ethonol is a way for politians to buy more votes in the big farm states (I say this as I drink my liquid corn, aka Pepsi). Without subsities, we need gas prices to be around $4 a gallon wholesale to make ethonol viable. If it wasn't a grab for votes, then we would be using sugar cane, which contains about 7 times the energy as corn.

With all the regulations and EPA permitting required, a new refinary requires gas to be about where it is now (which is why companies were looking at building them again). The government steps in and says, you have to use 20% ethonol in your mixture. That 20% decrease is enough to offset to viability of a new refinary. If you want more refinaries, tell your representitives to quit buying votes.