I was listening to CSPAN this morning and Bernie Sanders was speaking about the oil companies

I tried writing down what he said (wish I still knew my shorthand), but could only get a few items. My curiosity aroused, I started to do a little research.

Bernie stated in a 10 year period, the oil and gas companies posted a combined profit of $750 Billion. The entire industry only invested $1.5 billion in non-fossil fuel products. He also gave ALL the compensation packages for the CEOs, which I could not write fast enough, but will find them, but Occidential Petroleum's CEO received $750M in compensation last year.

This is what made me fly off the handle: Exxon Mobile reported to the SEC that they paid NO TAXES for 1999. IN FACT, THEY RECEIVED A $46M TAX REFUND FROM THE IRS!!!!! Their CEO received a retirement package of $398M.

He also talked about the $70M in subsidies the oil companies receive each year.

There is a bill before the Senate right now that would REMOVE the cap on oil spill cleanup; i.e., they pay ALL, not part of the oil spill no matter how much it costs. In this bill, they also want to strike the cap ($75M) for oil spill accidents.  I'm going to be watching this closely.

What I found so far was the following (this takes into consideration any expenses including shareholder profits, so we know their profits were higher):

Oil company profits

(This increase in consumer costs and oil company profits is relevant to the upcoming debate on bipartisan, comprehensive clean energy and global warming legislation. Opponents of reform will claim that such legislation would increase prices. But the reality is that the status quo policies have already harmed American families. An analysis of household energy spending between 2002 and 2007—the nonrecession years—found that the average household spent $1,130 more on energy in 2007. Nearly 85 percent of this increase was due to the rise in gasoline prices.)

Another Note: See this story on CNN Money entitied: "Proposed Spill Penalty: A Year of Profits."

http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/13/news/companies/oil_spill_bill/index.htm