Give Til It Hurts

Lately we have all been asked to do what we can to help alleviate the suffering and devastation being felt in the Gulf Coast. We have been generous as a nation, with cash donations to the Red Cross and other humanitarian relief efforts. A telethon held during last week's Monday Night Football double-header raised an estimated five million dollars. Jerry Lewis encouraged us to consider donating to the victims of Hurricane Katrina - his kids would understand. We continue to do what we can as a country to help our fellow Americans.
As a result of the destruction wreaked upon the southeast, especially the oil refineries, platforms, and pumping stations in the Gulf of Mexico, we are told that we can expect to be paying four dollars a gallon for gas soon. I have stopped being perplexed by the way the price of oil and gasoline moves steadily upward, it seems like some kind of naturally occurring phenomenon, not unlike gravity - only in reverse. But here's where I start to scratch my head: I can understand, from the standpoint of Bob and Ted's Oil company, why this kind of disaster could cause some kind of massive change in the way they do business. That one pumping station just off the coast of Louisiana was their lifeline. They will have to raise their prices to recover the losses that they will feel for repairs and lost revenue while they make those repairs.
But these aren't "Bob and Ted" operations. Shell Oil, now a global multi-national concern, had second quarter profits (released in July) that had moved up thirty-four percent. Shell maintained its profit and oil production outlook for the year, saying it expects between $3 billion and $5 billion in surplus cash. When was the last time you had "surplus cash" of any amount? And that's profit, kids. Not how much money they made - but how much money they are planning to KEEP. Shell is just one of the companies with concerns in the Gulf Coast region, and the truth is, many of the oil facilities that were potentially damaged or destroyed during the hurricane came through relatively unscathed. They're just about ready to get back to pumping oil back into our lives again. Fill up your HumVees!
Okay, I'm not expecting the price of gasoline to come back to anything resembling a rational price (we are paying about four dollars a gallon for bottled water these days anyway) - but wouldn't it be nice if Shell and a couple of their good pals in the oil business kicked a little extra cash into the hurricane relief pot? Maybe it's just me...