Originally Posted by Brav989
Well in net revenue ExxonMobil made $36.130 billion dollars in NET revenue. $370.680 billion total. Which is an all-time record for any publicly traded company in history.
Yup. We have to remember that oil companies are HUGE vertically integrated companies. I know $36 billion is a lot of money, but that is less than a 10% profit (and that is smaller than many companies). A solution to high oil prices is reinvesting these large oil company profits into new technology to make drilling for oil more reliable, more of a science, and therefore MUCH cheaper and easier. Some sort of government incentive might help this out. I mean an extremely high tax on profits over a billion dollars that is not reinvested into new means of exploration and scientific drilling. This needs to happpen, otherwise high oil prices are here to stay.
Originally Posted by C152driver
The vast majority of electricity in this country is created by burning coal, which is abundantly available. So, we'll all be driving electric cars around, but we wont be able to see anything
Continue down, oh, say 2 lines, to my comments on solar electricity. If you knew the kind of quantum leaps that solar energy is making, with the help of nanotechnology, you would know that coal will not be used forever. Also, I know in California, something like 30 or 35% (or maybe higher) is from renewable sources (hydro, wind, solar), and that number is state mandated to increase EVERY year.
I know this was a long post, but the first 3 paragraphs are an excerpt from a previous post of Southwest's fuel hedges, and the last paragraphs are an excerpt from a presentation I gave on the future on energy.
I feel the day that all cars become electric (and this WILL happen), you will see an abundance in oil that can last hundreds and hundreds of years. When oil prices, (and therefore jet fuel prices) are not attached to automobiles, the price will come down significantly. Furthermore, price spikes will be very moderate, and this will be a great day for aviation.
Give it 20 years. All electric cars. Solar power generating the majority of electricity. Nuclear reactor in space. And a major drop in demand for oil, which will lead to a major drop in the price of oil, and a major drop in the price of jet fuel.