Cheshire Cat Photo Blog(...said the Cat: 'we're all mad here....')

I don’t know about you – Big Oil company profits just make me angry.

Angry because Big Oil profits at the expense of economic recovery in other sectors….

Goods that move by ship, plane, or truck go up in price because of fuel costs.

Travel (or even just commuting to work) goes up in cost for all of us.

San Ramon, California-based Chevron reported a first-quarter profit of $6.47 billion, aided by rising oil prices and margins for refinery operations.

“Compared with the year-ago quarter, Chevron’s profit rose 4.2 percent. Sales and other operating revenues totaled $58.9 billion, Chevron stated. Those were 0.8 percent higher than the same quarter a year ago.”

The people who live in their wallets on Wall Street were not pleased, however. The “per-share” profits reported by Chevron fell 11 cents BELOW Wall Street’s predictions! (It always struck me as “interesting” that companies are penalized for failing to achieve BAD ESTIMATES. I wonder if the people who PROVIDE the bad estimates are similarly penalized…. ) Chevron’s overall per-share profit, including the gains, was $3.27.

“Legal issues also hound Chevron in the wake of oil leaks near the coast of Brazil and petroleum contamination in the Amazon jungle of Ecuador.”

No kidding!

The profit for Chevron’s “upstream” business (exploration, development, and production) rose 3.2% and totaled $6.17 billion.

“Profit for the downstream business — refinery, retail and transportation operations — totaled $804 million, a 29.3 percent jump. The U.S. downstream unit, which includes the company’s refineries in Richmond and elsewhere, produced a profit of $459 million, up 3.8 percent from a year ago.

Chevron is now producing earnings of $26.79 a barrel, the company told analysts Friday during a conference call. That’s $7 ahead of its closest competitor on that key benchmark.

These kinds of profits have helped Chevron amass a cash pile of $20 billion.”

And they did it the “old-fashioned” way… without resorting to the kind of creativity and innovation that propelled Apple to amass ITS (much larger) pile of cash! 😉 While improving the lives of many of “the rest of us….”

Chevron also announced that it would increase its dividend, its third increase in a year. That has CERTAINLY got to make some of America’s wealthiest 1% even wealthier.

“Dividends are a very important priority in terms of our use of cash,” Patricia Yarrington, Chevron’s chief financial officer, told analysts. “It is, in fact, the No. 1 priority.”

I’ll BET it is!

-Bill at

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