Exxon is Not OPEC

Lest we succumb to the Luddite pot-banging of the left, (hat tip to Marathon Pundit)just a reminder that Exxon does not control the world oil price. OPEC currently tries to do that.

As Ben Stein succintly points out:

Or to put it another way, the oil companies do not come even remotely close to setting the price of oil and gasoline. They either benefit from high prices or get hurt by low prices, but they do not set the price. The largest oil company in the U.S. (a piker compared with many foreign companies) controls less than 3 percent of the world's oil. Does that offer a clue on how prices get set?

Next, isn't it great that there is a world oil market that allocates oil and gasoline by price? Those of us who lived through the early 1970s when low, artificially fixed oil prices meant that there was sometimes literally no gasoline or heating oil, can only give praise that there is a price system to make sure there always is gasoline and heating oil at some price. (And I assure you, I pay a stunning price for gasoline, just as everyone else does, and I am awfully darned glad I can get it, rather than having a low posted price at a gas station with no gasoline to sell.)

Meanwhile, why is it so bad for oil companies to make a profit, even a big profit? That profit doesn't go into the pockets of Dr. Evil. It doesn't go to Saddam Hussein (not anymore). It goes to tens of millions of stockholders who use the dividends and the increase in share price to pay for their RV's and retirements and their (ungrateful) kids' college education. John D. Rockefeller is long gone.