We keep hearing about the obscene profits the oil companies are making in the news. On 8/7 in the Rocky mountain News on page 25 there was a story about this with comments from protest group Mi Familla Vota ridiculing the idea that drilling more oil will lower prices and from Rep. Claire Levy of Boulder saying The oil companies take their profits and leave the Government to deal with the impact.

Please allow me to shed some light on these comments. To Mi Familla Vota our whole economic system is based on supply and demand. We are demanding more energy and the politicians are not allowing the energy companies to give us more so the price has gone up. It’s not magic its supply and demand. As soon as we commit to drilling for more oil the price will come down. President Bush rescinded his father’s Presidential ban on drilling off the coast and with in 48 hours the price of oil dropped by $5.00 a barrel. If we actually sunk a new drilling platform imagine what would happen.

To the Rep. from Boulder if you are complaining about having to help the public because of high oil prices I have to ask what you are doing about the obscene taxes you are taking form the public.

The oil companies make approximately 8 cents of profit from every gallon of gas sold. Exxon made a profit of 11 billion which means Exxon had to drill, refine, and deliver around 8.4 billion gallons of gas. The federal tax on every gallon of gas sold is 18.4 cents so it seems to me your profit /tax is approximately 24 billion at the Federal level, over 2 times the amount for Exxon and the Feds did nothing for that money.

Pretty obscene if you ask me. Now if we take the state tax on a gallon of gas it comes to 40.4 cents per gallon and Colorado is in the lower half of state taxes according to the Federal government’s figures. Now who’s really making the obscene profits? No one likes where oil prices have gone but this problem really is man made and those men live in Washington D.C. and have refused to allow the Country to drill our own oil, build our own refineries, or build power plants. Oil is not the enemy and it is not going to be replaced any time soon because there is plenty of it and it works well and the worlds economy is reliant on it for as far in the future as we can see. That’s the truth as they say you can look it up.