Where does the 9 BILLION dollars Shell made in the 1st quarter of '08 go?

Question

.....and why is our gasoline still going up?

Answer 1

Drilling and exploration.

If you really want to understand what's really going on with oil I recommend a book by Matt Simmons.

"Twilight in the Desert"

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Some of the money goes to R&D for future oil exploration.

Profits from publicly traded companies such as Shell go to the shareholders of Shell, and to the shareholders of mutual funds in 401K's, etc. that include Shell as one of their stocks.  These can be distributed in the form of dividends or in gains in stock price.  There are a lot of regular citizens that own shares of Shell directly or by means of mutual funds and in retirement funds, so these profits are good.

As far as gasoline prices going up, it's basic economics:  Supply vs. demand.  I don't know if you are a US citizen, but if you think gasoline is expensie here, take a look at the prices in Europe, and you'll think we got it easy.

Answer 3

9 Billion?  Is that it?  According to a bit of quick internet research, I found that Americans use about 388.6 million gallons per day.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/quickfacts/q...

Over 90 days, that comes to 34,974,000,000 gallons of gas.

Divide that into $9,000,000,000 and that comes to $.2573/gallon.

Lets say that the price was $3.25 at the time, then the profit margin is about 8%.  If the price was higher then the margin would be lower.

This is not a high profit margin.  It is actually pretty low.

Remember, I am just counting US consumption.  There is gas sold all around the world that contributes to that 9 billion.

Answer 4

Definitely goes to my pocket!