Greedy Oil Companies and Charitable Natural Gas Companies?

Michael Giberson

Oil and gasoline prices are high and so it isn’t too tough to find complaints about skyrocketing greed at oil companies. Yet at the same time natural gas prices have fallen to incredible lows (about $2.10 per MMBTU on the NYMEX this morning for May 2012). Aren’t natural gas company executives greedy too?

It is a natural question, because to a large degree, the big oil companies in the United States are also big natural gas producers; Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron are all big in both categories. So what’s the deal? Did all of these companies shuffle their greedy executives into the oil business and their publicly-spirited, charitable folks into the gas business?

Or, similarly, if speculation explains high oil prices, why doesn’t speculation also cause high natural gas prices?

 

2 thoughts on “Greedy Oil Companies and Charitable Natural Gas Companies?”

  1. WSJ reported last week that Shell is contemplating a GTL plant for the gulf coast. “Environmmentalists” will, no doubt, be violently opposed, for some reason or the other.

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