"Matt Barrow" wrote:
http://www.redplanetcartoons.com/wor...7gasprices.jpg

It varies of course with location, but for a gallon of branded gas sold
in California the average values appear to be[1]:

$3.44 Retail price per gallon.
$0.62 Taxes (18%)
$1.61 Crude oil cost (47%)

Profit margins vary a lot by company and over time, but a mid-term (not
long term) average of ~8% seems a useful number.[2] Though Exxon managed
to get nearly 11% last year.[3] So for the above $3.44 gallon of gas,
and if they were still getting 11%, their profit would have been:

$0.38 Oil company profit.

So the $0.09 in the cartoon may be the gas station owner's EBITDA per
gallon.

The industries that really have high profit margins are banking, drugs,
and software. People rarely complain about price gouging from Microsoft
or other software companies, but their profit margins are quite large
relative to other industries. And some people wonder why I'm still in
the software business. ;-)

[1] http://www.energy.ca.gov/gasoline/margins/index.html
[2] http://www.gravmag.com/oil.html
[3] http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/01/news...xxon/index.htm