I’m not an economist, I don’t even play one on TV, but ignorance has never prevented me from opening my mouth before. Here’s what I understand: Oil is at record highs, approaching the once-unthinkable $100 per barrel range, the major oil companies are continuing to report record-setting levels of profit, with ExxonMobil reporting $9.4 billion in profits this quarter, down from $10.5 billion last quarter, and – this is where it starts to get controversial – oil is not infinite. This last point is contentious simply because no one really knows how much oil is left.

The Energy Information Administration cites figures from a Jan. 1 study in the journal Oil & Gas estimating there are roughly 1.3 trillion barrels of oil remaining in the Earth. It should be mentioned this amount is 2 percent higher than the estimate given in 2006. Although 1.3 trillion sounds like a tremendous amount, consider the EIA also reports that in 2004, global consumption was 83 million barrels a day. At current consumption levels, by the time I’m 51, the world could theoretically be out of oil.

The critics are probably already hollering that my numbers are erroneous and that I’m just a tree-loving anti-humanist. I’ll admit it, research done by Cambridge Energy Research Associates found there may be as much as three times the amount of oil reported by Oil & Gas. However, CERA’s numbers come from what are called the “unconventional oil” supplies, including oil sands, oil shale, arctic oil, deepwater oil and enhanced oil recovery. The problem with CERA’s extra 2.5 trillion barrels of oil is that we currently don’t have the technology to extract this oil on any sort of practical level.

My first question at this point is, why do we accept hugely bloated profits from an oil company while prices at the pump continue to flirt with the $3 range? I’m all for capitalism, but what ever happened to social responsibility and business ethics? Shouldn’t these multibillion-dollar-a-year companies do more than make the filthy rich even filthier? Not only has Exxon not given back to the nation, they’ve also successfully wormed their way out of paying billions of dollars in jury verdicts. They most recently had a $3.5 billion suit brought against them by Alabama overturned, and although they only owe half of the $5.29 billion from the infamous Exxon-Valdez oil spill nearly 20 years ago, they’ve yet to pay a single dime.

A prime example of the oil companies’ disregard for the public can be seen in the town of Port Arthur, Texas. In what could be called “Erin Brockovich 2,” the oil companies have been using Port Arthur as little more than a toxic waste dump, allowing the town to stagnate and fall into poverty while the companies continue to make huge profits. Hilton Kelly, an activist in Port Arthur, says the plants continually belch toxic fumes into the air causing asthma, respiratory ailments, skin irritations and cancer. The refineries and petrochemical plants contribute about 67 percent of the cities budget and were initially brought to Port Arthur using lucrative tax abatements in which the companies paid no taxes for two years and then only 10 percent of their total tax after that. Critics say in addition to the tax abatements, the refineries are under no obligation to hire citizens of Port Arthur, which has also prevented the city from benefiting from the refineries’ presence.

There seems to me to be a huge disconnect between the $2.79 I’m shelling out at the pump and the billions in profits the oil companies are earning. The oil companies talk a big game about how they can’t reduce prices and they’re just doing their job, but call me Hamlet, because something is rotten in the state of the nation. And although the American Petroleum Institute, big oil’s special interest group, has a very pretty slide show showing how the oil companies really only make about 1 percent more profit than the average non-petroleum business, they still don’t explain how the companies continue to report economy-wide record setting profits.

A similar act can be seen on Philip Morris USA’s Web site, where they state they agree “with the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and other serious diseases in smokers. Smokers are far more likely to develop such serious diseases than nonsmokers.” And yet they continue to sell their product.

But the issue isn’t cigarettes, it’s oil. And I haven’t even touched on OPEC, or Iraq or Turkey, which are all issues hugely important to the state of oil in the world. Here’s what I want to know: How do oil companies report near-record profits while our dollar sinks in value, our economy is wobbling from the sub-prime scandals and the price of gas continues to climb?

Oil is, for better or worse, the life blood of our economy and American way of life, but that shouldn’t give the petroleum companies carte blanche to do as they please. We need to demand greater transparency and accountability when it comes to the petroleum companies, precisely because it is so essential to our way of life.

– Quincy Miller is a senior in English from Altoona.