Make your predicitons here: How soon until Big Oil is asking for money?

[Stinky The Clown]

A barrel of crude is more than a hundred bux lower than it was this past summer. There's now talk of buck-a-gallon gas. Everyone knows no self respecting oil company can survive on **that**.

When will they put *their* gun to our heads?

And who will play the roles of Richard Shelby and Bob Corker?

[B Calm]

1. Have they stopped asking for money?

[madokie]

2. Middle of next week

Its coming as sure as we are here today.

[NOW tense]

3. January 15th

They will give the rest of the bailout money to them.

[Bandit]

4. Exxon is slated to receive four billion dollars of tax payer money next year.

Exxon Corporation clears, and I mean complete Net Profit after every single expense has been paid Over One Hundred Million dollars a Day This last quarter that figure was over One Hundred and Fifty Million dollars a Day.. A friggin' DAY and they have been doing this day in and day out, week after week, month after month, year after year, for the last six years, and we still subsidize them to a tune of four billion dollars a year .. Is there anything wrong with this picture?

[HamdenRice]

5. Never. They are not leveraged.

They have massive retained profits. They don't generate a huge amount of employment. There would be no repercussions to the broader economy if they go through hard times.

And even if they did have hard times, there is zero political will to do anything for them.

[ThomWV]

6. Not to mention that there is still strong demand for their product

and so if the current companies were to go out of business they would be replaced immediately by the new companies that would form and operate using the resources sold when the existing companies folded.

[HamdenRice]

7. What could happen is something to keep small drillers in business

Odd as it sounds. I remember during the oil glut, there was talk (maybe even programs?) to keep small oil drillers in business. The idea was that things were so bad in Texas that the country might permanently lose drilling capacity if things were allowed to continue on course. I don't remember whether these programs were adopted.

I don't know the structure of the industry today. Back then, there were small drillers who sold out to big oil, and the focus was helping the small drillers.

I doubt there's much wild catting any more, given the high tech costs of finding increasingly scarce domestic oil.

[marmar]

8. The Oil Companies already are huge welfare queens.....

.... It's past time to cut off their benefits.

[TahitiNut]

9. Indeed. And with the 'falling' price of oil & gasoline, I'd support a fuel tax increase now.

The time is ripe to bump the Federal Excise Tax on a gallon of gasoline by $0.10 ... and use it to subsidize public transit.

[marmar]

10. "gasoline by $0.10 ... and use it to subsidize public transit."

Absolutely.