Shell Posts "Obscene" Profit

Daily Mail:

Shell smashed all-time British company profit records today, posting 2007 earnings of $27.5billion (£13.9billion), and immediately ran into a storm with union leaders, who are demanding the Government hits the oil giant with a windfall tax.

Shell's profit surge - it is now making a staggering $75million (£38million) a day - on the back of a booming oil price that touched $100 a barrel this winter, was labelled as "obscene" by Tony Woodley of Unite, the UK's largest trade union, as Britons struggle with soaring energy costs.

"Shell shareholders are doing very nicely while the rest of us are paying the price and struggling," said Woodley.

Read the whole story: Daily Mail

Comments

[BlackJAC]

It's gonna get worse: I heard on the radio today that the oil companies are claiming there's a shortage of alkalate, the substance used in summer-blend gasoline, which will send prices up to $4/gallon and rape us even further.

[Dickey]

chances are, their proffits are due to what you buy in their store and not from their gas prices

they dont make money off of gas sales

its all that junk you buy in their store

[armadillious2002]

This is what happens when you turn the keys to the Nation over to a bunch of oilies.

Under clinton oil at one time dropped to as low as 11 dollars per barrel. When the Oil Companies got together and ran it back up into the high 20's Clinton opened up the strategic reserve driving it back down.

This is what happens when you have a President who is looking out for the people.

[Badwater]

Real Mission Accomplished for Bush! The family kickbacks will be good this time around.

[rbspickles]

Wow, for some reason my backside is sore. And I wasn't even kissed!

[TruthLives]

Shell Oil is a Dutch Company based in the Netherlands.

[Dickey]

What you dont realize is that 85% of that profit is due to sales from their convenience store
so maybe buy your 2 litters of coke elsewhere

[rollingdivision]

Shell's return, margins and profitability are in the area of the market averages and are not that high. The absolute number are huge because the size of their business is huge. Shell, and the other oil companies, provide energy at very good prices. If their is a thief in the energy marketplace it is OPEC.

Shell
Profitability
Profit Margin (ttm): 8.67%
Operating Margin (ttm): 11.55%

Apple
Profitability
Profit Margin (ttm): 15.37%
Operating Margin (ttm): 19.67%

Microsoft
Profitability
Profit Margin (ttm): 29.29%
Operating Margin (ttm): 40.70%

[OkieMon]

oil companies have enjoyed an energy monopoly for over 100 years. It is time to convert them to public utilities like we did with the electricity and natural gas companies years ago.

[Fentwin]

I'm not anywhere close to being an economist, so if someone could explain this;

How does a company post record profits when their raw resouce costs the most that it ever has?

[FeloniouslyAnnoying]

Honestly though, if anyone should be benefiting from a windfall tax for shells 'obscene' profits it should be the united states. They already tax the shit out of gas in the U.K. Probably not even the place that shell makes the majority of its money. That country is tiny as hell.

[lisakaz]

No kidding it's obscene. And I love the excuses that it's "not their fault" because the raw material has gotten so expensive (from ppl like Ben Stein who should know better).

If a unit cost of a material goes up and the sale of the finished good goes up in keeping with the rise, the profit margin REMAINS THE SAME. That is, to use made up figures, if a unit cost doubles to $1 from $.50 and the final cost goes to $2.50 from $2, the profit is unchanged (simplifying that this would involve more than profit, of course). Maybe call it add-on value, some of which is profit.

But it for the unit cost is $1 and the final cost is $3 or $4, then the profit margin HAS TO INCREASE, regardless of what it was or is. And that is what has happened, by the oil companies own reports of profits. How do they obtain record profits just from an increase of a raw material? They don't UNLESS they are using that upswing as an opportunity to gouge the consumer.

[Crozier]

There is no doubt that the Dutch Royal Family is the quietly wealthiest person on the planet.
This royal family....­led by queen regnants for over a century...­.will soon have their first king in the heir apparent.

The liberal Dutch have a bourgeois monarchy where a diamond tiara is about all that suggests pomp and circumstan­ce...unlik­e their UK cousins. In fact, all existing constitutional monarchs are quite bourgeois throughout Europe.

With trillions in profits worldwide, the family are never "showy" about their wealth. Like the late Walton and Hunt patriarchs­....they are "just plain ole folk."

[ronspri]

But the oil companies NEED that money. Those CEO salaries are big. What's a mega corporation to do?

[Mother77]

Where is Congress?