They look like blow-away numbers.
29 April 2008 - 25 ניסן 5768 by Huw
According to online-sources (and I recognise that gasbuddy may be biased), the petrol can be had in Canada for about CAD1.18/litre, which, with the currency conversion, comes out to USD4.42/gallon. When I first visited a year ago, using the conversion rate from then, gas cost approximately USD4.33/gallon: Canadian gas has increased by about ten US cents in the last 12 months. American gas, however, has gone up over ten times as much.
Why?
Analysts are projecting the possibility of USD7-10 a gallon by the time this is over.
Why?
Could this have anything to do with it?
Royal Dutch Shell PLC beat all forecasts on Tuesday with a 12 per cent rise in first-quarter current cost of supply (CCS) net income, helped by record oil prices which broke $100 (U.S.) a barrel in the period.
Excluding non-operating items, which amounted to a net charge of $77-million, the CCS result, which strips out the impact of changes in the value of fuel inventories, was $7.85-billion.
A Reuters poll of 11 analysts gave an average forecast of $6.84-billion for Shell’s first quarter CCS earnings, excluding non-operating items. The highest forecast was $6.99-billion.“They look like blow-away numbers. Surprising across all divisions at this time,” said Jason Kenney, analyst at ING. “I can’t see anything in particular that is unusual, they’ve just done well.”
Shell and other oil companies are benefiting from surging oil prices, which topped $100 a barrel in January and have since climbed towards $120. Earnings at Shell’s rival BP PLC also beat forecasts.
While American politicians are entertaining us with their dickering over an 18¢ tax that may, possibly save the average American USD30 over the course of the summer, capitalists are raping American voters - and no one is talking about how we need to control or even punish the companies that are doing this. It matters not if this is foreign or domestic oil: the companies are the same. But, misled by the media (who are, in many cases, funded by the same companies) American voters will continue to believe that wars and Arabs are responsible for their problems. And they will soon imagine they need to rape the Arctic just to keep prices stuck at this artificially created high.
