Gashostage.com

This is a story that shouldn’t surpise anyone.  Gas prices to rise just before summer and all the holidays…. sounds familiar? 

The steady climb to higher spring gasoline prices is under way and a repeat of last year’s $3 a gallon is a strong possibility.

The average price for a gallon of regular in Metro Detroit reached $2.28 Monday, according AAA Michigan. That’s up 38 cents from a month ago and the highest price at the pump since Dec. 4.

Statewide, the average price for a gallon of gas is $2.30.

Pump prices are more than a dime higher than at this time last year, fueling concerns that Michigan drivers again could soon pay $3 a gallon — as they have the past two summers.

“Things might stay stable for a week,” said AAA spokesman Jim Rink, noting prices are only up 3 cents from a week ago. “But once we get into March, prices will go up and hit a peak in late May.”

Rink said it’s not a certainty that prices will top three bucks, but the fact they reached that level the past two years shows the market can sustain that price during the summer driving season.

The higher cost to make summer fuel, higher gas demand and speculators — those who buy and sell oil as an investment — push pump prices higher during the spring months, Rink said.

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General Motors is in talks to buy DaimlerChrysler AG’s struggling Chrysler Group in its entirety, according to several reports.

According to the reports, sources in Germany and the United States said high-level talks between GM (down $0.14 to $36.30, Charts) and DaimlerChrysler (up $2.83 to $73.08, Charts) executives are taking place.

Chrysler, which has already announced plans to close plants like this one in Newark, Del., and cut 13,000 jobs, could be sold to rival General Motors, according to published reports.
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Its German parent confirmed Wednesday it is looking at strategic options for the North American unit. When asked if those options included a sale or spin-off of the unit, DaimlerChrysler Chairman Dieter Zetsche responded “this means all options are on the table.”

Chrysler Group announced Wednesday it would be cutting about 13,000 workers and closing plants over the next three years as a part of a restructuring plan aimed to restore profits by next year.

Talks of an alliance between GM and DaimlerChrysler was first reported recently in Germany’s Manager-Magazin.

10 cars worth waiting for
Other unnamed sources said to be familiar with the discussions confirmed the reports Friday for Reuters and the industry newspaper Automotive News.

DaimlerChrysler employed J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. to consider options for the Chrysler Group, to help the automaker explore strategic options, according to trade newspaper.

For sale: A smaller Chrysler
But others are also skeptical on whether the discussions are real.

“This would be an at least $5 billion plus deal and GM is not that liquid right now,” John Casesa said, an automotive analyst with Casesa Strategic Advisors, told CNN. “I’m not convinced at all and I think it’s unlikely.”

Other experts contacted by CNNMoney.com said that while a GM purchase of Chrysler appeared unlikely, they could see other buyers emerging.

“The challenge is who would be a buyer,” David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research, said Wednesday of a possible sale of Chrysler. “Maybe a Chinese company that really wants entrance into U.S. market or Renault-Nissan would see it fit with its strategy. But it’s tough.”

Chrysler’s Valentine’s Day massacre
Carlos Ghosen, the CEO of both French automaker Renault and Japanese automaker Nissan (Charts), had expressed interest in finding a North American partner to join the alliance between his two companies. Talks between GM and those two automakers last year were abandoned without any agreement.

Kevin Tynan, auto analyst at Argus Research, said Wednesday he believes Chrysler will end up being sold due to pressure from DaimlerChrysler’s shareholders to undo the 1998 merger, but he thinks a sale to a private equity group is more likely than a combination with another automaker.

“There’s value to those brands,” he said. “I think relative to Ford Motor (Charts), there’s less dead weight. Nine years later, it’s probably the right thing to do. I think there’s a feeling in Germany that it’s time to cut bait.”

Officials for DaimlerChrysler and GM issued no comments on the reports.

DaimlerChrysler has long tried to reverse the drop in sales with previous cost-cutting moves but slipped into the No. 4 spot last year behind Toyota (up $0.21 to $136.98, Charts) in the United States.

Other reports have suggested that talks between Chrysler and GM were more limited in scope than a full merger. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the two were in talks to jointly develop a large SUV that would be similar to the Chevrolet Suburban, a product that Chrysler Group doesn’t have in its lineup. The New York Times had a similar report Friday. Neither publication had their own reports on the potential merger talks as of mid-day Friday.

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With oil stocks declining, war in the middle east and all the other factors that go into the oil business, Exxon is hurting.  Imagine if there was only enough oil and gas to go around…. Instead of making lots of profit, Exxon is forced to make small modest gains to eek out a living.

One can only hope that Exxon will survive the hard realities of the modern world where we lie about the reserves, create panic to keep the oil abd gas prices up and cheat the poor nations out of their natural resources.

Dont get me wrong, every business is allowed and encouraged to make profit in my book… but you have to admit that 35.9 billion might be a bit much.  When you look at how much money they hide in big bonuses to top executives, you can only imagine how much money they are actually making, not just what they report to IRS.

Article to follow…..

Oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp. on Thursday posted the largest annual profit by a U.S. company _ $39.5 billion _ even as earnings for the last quarter of 2006 declined 4 percent.   The 2006 profit topped Exxon Mobil’s own previous record of $36.13 billion set in 2005.

Revenue at the world’s largest publicly traded oil company rose to $377.64 billion for the year, surpassing the record $370.68 billion Exxon posted in 2005.

“Exxon Mobil continued to leverage its globally diverse resource base to bring additional crude oil and natural gas to market,” Rex W. Tillerson, chairman of the Irvin, Texas-based company, said in a statement.

Exxon Mobil’s record annual earnings followed a year of extraordinarily high energy prices as crude oil topped $78 a barrel in the summer _ driving up average gasoline prices in the United States to more than $3 a gallon. Prices retreated later in the year.

The fourth-quarter decline reflects lower profits from Exxon’s refining and marketing operations and a sharp dropoff in natural gas prices.

Results for the October-December period mimicked those of U.S. competitor ConocoPhillips, which last week said its fourth-quarter profit fell 13 percent _ also primarily because of lower natural gas prices and refining margins. But hefty earnings earlier in the year helped Houston-based ConocoPhillips record its most profitable year on record, earning $15.55 billion.

ConocoPhillips is the nation’s third-largest integrated oil company behind Exxon Mobil and Chevron Corp., which is scheduled to report 2006 results Friday.

Also Thursday, Royal Dutch Shell PLC reported a 21 percent rise in fourth-quarter earnings, buoyed in part by high energy prices and the sale of some operations. Net profit came to $5.28 billion, up from $4.37 billion. But excluding divestitures and other one-time items, Shell’s earnings from oil production fell 3 percent, while fourth- quarter sales were flat at $75.5 billion.

The company, based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, also said it had taken important steps to bulk up its proven reserves, which were revealed to have been inflated in a 2004 accounting scandal.

At Exxon Mobil, profit for the fourth quarter of 2006 declined to $10.25 billion from the $10.71 billion Exxon earned in the 2005 quarter _ a record quarterly profit for any U.S. public company. That best-ever profit came when the price of both natural gas and crude oil skyrocketed in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which damaged wells, pipelines and refineries in the key energy-producing Gulf of Mexico.

Analysts largely have predicted declines in fourth-quarter earnings for the big U.S. oil companies because of the moderation in prices.

Exxon Mobil’s per-share earnings in the fourth quarter rose to $1.76 from $1.71 as the company reduced the number of shares outstanding. Wall Street analysts polled by Thomson Financial had forecast earnings of $1.51 a share.

Excluding special items, Exxon Mobil earned $9.84 billion, or $1.69 a share, in the final three months of 2006.

Quarterly revenue fell to $90 billion from $99 billion in the year-ago period.

For the year, Exxon earned $6.62 per share in 2006 versus $5.71 per share in 2005.

Exxon shares slipped 10 cents to $74 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange. They have tarded in a 52-week range of $56.64 to $79.

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