Oil Companies

We all know that oil companies that supply our gasoline needs have be gauging us and making exorbitant profits for the past few years. No one, except the oil companies themselves, would deny this. Exxon alone made over 40 BILLION dollars in 2007.

So why has nothing been done to stop this gauging and the harm it has caused? Some have suggested a windfall profit tax but that would encourage oil companies that have not already done so - to move offshore. That would result in not only the loss of the windfall profit tax but also the normal corporate and personal taxes paid by these companies and their executives and employees.

A second suggestion is regulating the price of gasoline by government. The problem with this is that gasoline is a global commodity. Regulate the price that can be charged in one country and more supply moves to a non-regulated country which may well result in possible shortages in the regulated jurisdiction.

A third solution is that the government get into the oil production and supply business and become a competitor of the big oil companies. After all government grants the leases for off-shore and other protected area drilling. Why not lease the drilling rights to a publicly owned company. Under this scenario we have a publicly owned company competing with in the marketplace and would help control prices.

Mexico, Venezuela, Saudia Arabia and many other countries have state controlled oil companies.

I know what you are thinking - the solution sounds plausible BUT we all know how bad government is at running a business.

So you can see we have no easy solution to offer and neither have our government leaders.

We are asking you to less us know your ideas for helping solve this problem. We would really like to hear from you so write us at feedback@nakednews.com.