$21,169,000,000

$21,169,000,000 is the ‘Profit for the year’ 2007 according to BP New Zealand’s Annual Report. That is a rather large profit for a New Zealand company I would have thought. A profit that might indicate that they’re over valuing there services maybe? What’s more, $20,845,000,000 got paid to shareholders. That’s $5,000 for every single person, man, woman, child, in New Zealand, being paid to the shareholders. That’s obscene.

As a family we would probably go through at least $6,420 in petrol each year. If only half the money going to the shareholders got put back into the community – like our Power Company does – that would be around $2,500 each, for a family of five it would come to a total of $12,500, more than enough to cover all our petrol costs, WOF, Rego and other running costs and allow us to purchase cheese once in a while.

And lets not forget that BP is only one of the players in the New Zealand petrol market.

But hey, if the international price of crude oil has gone up, then it’s only fair to put up local petrol prices right? Of course, as Frank pointed out yesterday, when the crude price falls, the pump price seldom follows suit.