(MSNBC) When major oil companies report their quarterly profits next week, they’re once again expected to post record numbers. With crude trading around $60 a barrel, the oil industry is enjoying one of the biggest windfalls in its history. But as the industry looks for places to put that cash, it’s finding it harder and harder to put funds to work finding new deposits of oil and natural gas.
By just about any measure, the past three years have produced one of the biggest cash gushers in the oil industry’s history. Since January of 2002, the price of crude has tripled, leaving oil producers awash in profits. During that period, the top 10 major public oil companies have sold some $1.5 trillion worth of crude, pocketing profits of more than $125 billion.
Wow, what a coincidence! President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Rice, Secretary of the Interior Norton, Former Secretary of Energy Abraham, and Former Secretary of Commerce Evans all made their fortunes in oil, too. What are the odds?
“This is the mother of all booms,” said Oppenheimer & Co. oil analyst Fadel Gheit. “They have so much profit, it’s almost an embarrassment of riches. They don’t know what to do with it.”
I have an idea: how about donating some of it to purchase some armor and ammo to our soldiers, donating some more to support groups for veterans and their families, and using the rest to buy some health insurance for forty million uninsured Americans?
