ConocoPhillips Doubles Its Profit for 2008 — Harbinger for Bigger Oil Companies
$14 billion profit for the first three quarters is more than $7
billion above 2007, money that “went straight onto consumers’ crushing
credit card debt,” says watchdog group.
Santa Monica, CA — ConocoPhillips is the smallest of the Big Five Oil
companies, but it made profits in the third quarter that match what
giant Exxon made as recently as 2004. Its $5.2 billion quarterly profit
and $14.8 billion profits so far in 2008 vividly show the damage that
oil and fuel prices did this year to consumers and the U.S. economy,
said the nonprofit, nonpartisan Consumer Watchdog.
“These gargantuan profit leaps should warn Congress not to be
distracted by the banking crisis from regulation of energy markets,”
said Judy Dugan, research director of Consumer Watchdog. “Conoco’s
doubling of profit over the first three quarters of 2008 came straight
out of consumers’ pockets and mostly onto their credit cards. Energy
costs were stressing a damaged economy months before banks started
imploding, and the energy debt pileup will suppress economic recovery.”
Conoco is the smallest of the Big Five oil companies, behind Exxon
Mobil, BP, Shell and Chevron. Yet its $5.2 billion record third quarter
profit was as big as Exxon’s for the third quarter of 2004. (Click here to get full company-to-company profit comparisons since 2000 on OilWatchdog.com’s “Oil Profits Monster” Excel chart.)
Conoco doesn’t usually rate the attention given to profit reports from
Exxon, but it’s a harbinger of the pig-at-the-trough profits that will
certainly be reported by its bigger brothers in the next two weeks,
said Consumer Watchdog. Though overall profits dipped slightly from
from the 2nd quarter as oil prices slid, refining profits were up.
Conoco’s third-quarter profits on refining were rose $185 million over
the previous quarter, even though Conoco reported refining less fuel
and other products—and indicator that as oil process fall, the major
companies will push to gain more profit from refining.
“The price of gasoline has dropped only half as much as the price of
crude oil since July,” said Dugan. “That means more profit for refiners
and in some cases for retailers, and less benefit for consumers. The
pattern of slower reductions in gasoline prices is likely to continue
through the rest of the year, to the companies’ profit and consumers’
detriment.”
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