EXXON PAYS $11 BILLION IN TAX, GOVERNMENT STILL NOT HAPPY; GOVERNMENT DOES NOTHING TO HELP EARN THOSE PROFITS JUST WANTS THE MONEY!

Exxon-Mobil earned nearly $11 billion in the first quarter. So why are we not celebrating this lofty accomplishment?

The world's largest publicly traded company said Thursday that higher oil prices boosted profits 69 percent from a year ago. The result was Exxon's best since earning a record $14.83 billion in 2008's third quarter.

This is only 2 cents per gallon...the government collected about the same amount in taxes from Exxon!

Wall Street had been expecting sharply higher earnings for oil companies. Oil prices rose 17 percent in the quarter. President Obama wants to cut into some of those earnings by eliminating $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies for oil companies. Come on Mr. Obama, are you so financially illiterate so as to not understand the capitalist system...they paid $11 billion in taxes!!!!! This quarter!

Exxon is taking steps to dilute any potential furor over the results. On a company blog Wednesday, the company said that it has little control over the price of oil, which is now near $113 per barrel. It also noted that less than 3 cents of every dollar it earns comes from the sale of gasoline and diesel fuel.

Gas is already above $4 in 8 states and the District of Columbia. And on Thursday, the Commerce Department said economic growth slowed sharply in the first quarter, partly because of high gas prices.

On the blog, Ken Cohen, Exxon Mobil Corp.'s vice president of public and government affairs, said the company was anticipating "the inevitable headlines and sound bites about high gasoline prices and what to do about them" after the earnings were reported. In addition to the routine post-earnings conference call with analysts, Exxon is making Cohen available this afternoon for a separate call with members of the media.

Exxon's results followed strong profit gains by other oil companies.

Europe's largest oil company, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, reported $8.78 billion in first-quarter profits, up 60 percent from a year ago. BP PLC's quarterly earnings rose 16 percent to $7.2 billion. ConocoPhillips said net income grew 43 percent to $3 billion and Occidental Petroleum Corp. said earnings climbed 46 percent to $1.55 billion.

Chevron Corp., the second-biggest U.S. oil company, is expected Friday to report a 25 percent increase to $5.69 billion.

Argus Research analyst Phil Weiss said oil companies will struggle to win over people as long as they're making billions of dollars every quarter, even though he thinks the industry makes a reasonable argument.

"They really don't have a lot of control" over the price of gasoline, Weiss said. "But then they get these high profits and people get upset. That's what politicians respond to."

Exxon reported net income of $10.65 billion, or $2.14 per share, for the first three months of the year. That compares with $6.3 billion, or 1.33 per share a year ago. Revenue increased 26 percent to $114 billion.

The results beat Wall Street estimates of $2.04 per share on sales of $112.6 billion, according to FactSet. Shares fell for Exxon and other oil companies, however, on expectations for a continued drop in U.S. gasoline demand. On Wednesday, the Department of Energy said demand for gasoline over the past four weeks was 1.6 percent lower than a year earlier.

Exxon shares lost 44 cents to $87.34 in morning trading.

Exxon increased earnings even though it produced less oil and natural gas liquids. Benchmark crude prices rose 20 percent from a year ago.

The company has increasingly focused on producing natural gas. Exxon expects natural gas to displace coal as the second most important fuel source within the next decade. Last year it acquired XTO Energy to become the largest U.S. natural gas producer.

Exxon's natural gas output rose 24 percent in the quarter, but prices declined as other companies followed its lead and rushed to develop underground shale gas deposits in North America. Natural gas prices fell nearly 16 percent from a year ago.

Earnings grew across the company's business segments. Income from its exploration and production business gained 49 percent to $8.7 billion while the company's downstream business, which includes refineries, posted a huge 30-fold jump to more than $1.1 billion.

Are to to expect that these companies, which are the most efficient generators of the energy that drives the entire world are to make no profits?

They pay the same amount to the government which does absolutely nothing to earn it, so is that supposed to be unfair?

The policies of the administration are the cause of the high prices...we have oil, we have gas and we need to DRILL, BABY DRILL!!!!!

"HOPE AND CHANGE" TO BLAME FOR HUGE FUEL PRICE INCREASES; ALL MERCHANDISE AND FOOD PRODUCTS WILL ALSO "CHANGE" AND AFFECT EVERYTHING WE BUY TOO

Prices That Will Rise Along With Your Gas

You can start thinking of why the Hope and Change leader should or should not be re-elected, and I thought of the moronic agenda of not using the oil and gas resources of the USA which could actually be self sustaining in OIL energy if we tapped in and used all including the tar sands, etc...we are number one on the reserves. We have in shale, tar sands and under ground oil and offshore oil, more that Saudi Arabia. We could see $1.99 gasoline just after announcing plans to drill.

ALL ECONOMIES IN ALL COUNTRIES RUN ON FOSSIL FUEL...GET REAL WE WILL NOT BE POWERING OUR TANKS, SUV'S, AND AUTOS WHEN WE DRIVE A HUNDRED MILES TO WORK, AND AIRPLANES WITH BATTERIES WHICH REQUIRE BATTERY CONTENTS FROM COMPONENTS MINED IN CHINA AND AFGHANISTAN!!!!!

I also thought about how it seemed prior to the election of President B.O., the TV movies always seemed to show a "black" president, so we were all prepared and ready to have a great thinking and bright aggressive problem solving ( always avoided the disaster in those movies or solved world problems)black president....also the feeling was that "it was about time".

We do not expect or desire the end of cheap gas, cheap goods and low taxes....I guess nobody really asked what change he had in mind...but that will be for the 2012 election...I I could cast that early NO B.O. vote in an early voting polling station I am ready already!

I just spent $105 to fill up my tank. I watched a big truck rumble past filled with food pallets destined for Trader Joe's, and I started thinking about all the other things whose prices will go up in step with the $4.49-a-gallon gas.

Transportation costs may not have immediate effects on the prices of other goods, but as they start to build up and the trucking companies' hedges expire, everything gets more expensive.

Here are some prices that are sure to rise along with the price of gas as thousands of products contain petroleum ranging from lipstick clothing: here are some that you will feel a lot more immediately:

Air travel is, of course, number one. Expecting an unusual number of trips to conferences this summer, and watching the price of a barrel of oil tick higher and higher, I snapped up tickets as soon as I had the cash on hand rather than waiting until the almost-last-minute (my usual m.o. is to wait for fare sales).

I needn't have rushed; the last few price increase attempts by airlines haven't yet been "sticky" -- a few airlines will test the water with a $4 or $8 or $10 increase, waiting to see if other airlines on that route match the price before letting it fall back to its former level. But prices have been up between 6% and 17% all year compared to the same time in 2009, and the continued test increases say that airlines will keep pushing the fare envelope.

Fast food. Want burgers and fries? If you're a regular visitor to one of America's finest purveyors of cheap fattening food -- say, a few times a week -- you could end up spending just as much, if not more, at McDonald's and Wendy's than you do for gas. Price increases haven't been announced yet, but it's safe to say that $0.20 or $0.30 more on your favorite menu items isn't out of the question. Depending on your orders and frequency, this could add up to a few hundred dollars a year.

Bananas and potatoes and tomatoes, oh my. Rising produce prices have been a problem almost all year, and bad weather in Mexico is still depressing prices. Canadians saw an especially nasty increase in the price of fruits and vegetables in March, 3.3% sequentially; year-over-year, average nationwide prices for fresh produce were up 9.8% in March. You'll continue to see especially high prices on tropical fruits and those vegetables that are out of season in your neighborhood (think tomatoes and strawberries for most of the U.S.). Reports from farmers in Portland, Ore., have me worried that the wet weather is going to mean scary prices for fresh peas and lettuce when they start appearing in the market next month.

Stamps for postcards and packages. You know who uses a lot of gas? The people in the business of delivering letters and packages to your door -- the ones you're ordering online so you don't have to spend money for gas. Well, there's no such thing as free transportation (unless you're a bicyclist or pedestrian, I suppose), and the USPS and its private competitors are going to have to pay more for trucking packages and mail across the great U.S. of A. While regular first-class mail stamps will stay at 44 cents each, postcards will go up a penny; larger envelopes and packages will cost more per ounce, as will mail to some international destinations.

Beef and bacon. We've already seen indications that bacon prices will skyrocket this year; the raw ingredient for bacon, lean pork bellies, is up 50% so far this year. Beef prices are the impetus for Wendy's to raise prices -- they use fresh beef and can't hedge costs quite as easily at McDonald's by stocking up. Even if we don't see any other price pressures this year, the USDA predicts consumers will see 6.5% to 7.5% increase in the price of their meat.

Coffee. From Starbucks to Maxwell House, coffee prices are up as much as 56% since last year. My favorite coffee-and-pizza shop is now a pizza shop alone, thanks to rising coffee prices. The culprit is the skyrocketing price of green arabica beans, the building block of any good coffee. Unseasonable rains and frosts in Mexico and other tropical locales are the culprit; they send the harvest quantities downward and are creating such havoc in the markets that some coffee growers are hoarding beans, hoping for a huge payday to make up for the depressed yields.

Orange juice. Another victim of that unseasonable freeze in tropical areas -- this time, Florida -- Tropicana is raising prices on its orange juice. Prices are expected to go up from 4% to 8%, says Pepsi, its corporate parent. Last year, the company didn't raise prices exactly, but it did downsize its packaging. One of its popular sizes went from 64 ounces to 59 ounces. Next year, will we see 55-ouncers, I wonder? How low can you go?

Chocolate. So, we've got Middle East tensions...two years of bad weather in Florida and Mexico...rising transportation costs...and dwindling supplies of pork bellies. What else could go wrong? In the Ivory Coast, political turmoil has caused cocoa bean costs to go way up. Sugar is more expensive, too; that's what caused Hershey to raise wholesale prices for its chocolate by as much as 9.7%. I don't watch prices of this sort of chocolate closely enough to know how that's impacted Easter candy -- some chocolatiers are absorbing the costs for now, it seems -- but I think I'm going to stock up on my own favorite brand.

That is just the start...everything will cost more as you will be amazed how the world economy is driven by fossil fuels.

We got them, they are here for our use, let's use them. DRILL BABY DRILL.

PRICE OF GAS AROUND THE WORLD

Prices are quoted in US dollars per gallon for regular unleaded as of March 2011

Oslo, Norway $6.82

Hong Kong$6.25

Brussels, Belgium $6.16

London, UK $5.96

Rome, Italy $5.80
CANADA $5.36

Tokyo, Japan $5.25

Sao Paul o , Brazil $4.42

New Delhi, India $3.71

Sidney, Australia $3.42

Johannesburg , South Africa $3.39

Mexico City$2.22

Buenos Aires, Argentina $2.09
... YOU'RE GONNA LOVE THIS ....

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia $0.09

Kuwait $0.08

Caracas, Venezuela $0.12

Gee, if only the U.S. was an oil producing nation.....

Hey, wait a minute!!! we are,what the hell happened!!