Just my 2 cents worth.....After reading about one of the major oil companies making 10.7 billion dollars profit for the last quarter I was trying to rationalize how you could make that much money if you only made 8 cents a gallon profit on the gas that was sold. I realize that gas is not the only product they sell and as I re-read the article I came up with what I think is the reason for this huge profit. The article stated that the oil company did not produce enough oil to meet the demand so they had to purchase oil at $127 a barrel. This is the cost they used to compute their profit. So since they owned the majority of the wells that supplied the majority of their supply and they had to buy some at $127 per barrel then all their oil is worth $127 per barrel even if it was out of their own wells.

My cousin had a job as a maintaince man for an oil company in Kansas that had 23 wells on a square mile of property. His job was to check the guages on each well, each day and inform his boss of any changes in the readings which would indicate a leak. They were holding that oil at that time until the price went up enough to pump it out. I guarantee that all those wells are pumping now.

They may be only making 8 cents a gallon on gas but they are probably making $3 per each gallon of oil that they sell to themselves.