Oil price up, but so are profits

To the editor:

Everybody knows that oil has gone up to over $50 a barrel. Back when oil was $10 a barrel, Exxon made $2 billion profit, but this quarter Exxon made $20 billion in profit. Back when oil was $10 a barrel, gasoline was 25 cents a gallon. Now it's over $2 a gallon. That's 10 times the amount of profit, and the price of gas has gone up almost 10 times.

Now the big question: Does that mean the dollar is worth two and a half times less than back then? And one other thing: That $2 billion profit was for a year, not a quarter,

SAM LADWIG, Cape Girardeau