Ken

Either we start drilling ANWAR, and off the Atlantic & Pacific coasts or we continue to help Saudi Arabia rape the American people blind. Why can't this simple fact be understood by Americans? We hear daily about obscene profits by American oil companies when the real profits are being taken by the Middle East and OPEC. We get screwed every time we fill out tanks to drive to work and we have American's who think that $4 isn't high enough. They want $8 dollar gas. We have to drill, there is no doubt about that. So are we going to have foreign owned companies come in and drill our oil only to sell it back to us at prices we cannot sustain?

The companies like Exxon and the others have to make a profit, so they can pay share holders like Al Franken, they have to explore and buy oil leases, they have to do business and they do not set the market price for their product. That is set by the speculators who invest in Oil and want to make a profit. So when they make less profit as a percentage of income than most average US companies, how can we fault them for something that they didn't create? The real problem is OPEC who controls 90% of the oil that is drilled and distributed around the world. If everyone is so upset at their profits how much would you say that OPEC has raked in over the past 2 years in profit?