Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Comparing Burger Chains and Oil Companies

According to QSRmagazine.com, the top burger chains in the US are
  1. McDonalds
  2. Burger King
  3. Wendy's
  4. Sonic
  5. Jack in the Box
  6. Dairy Queen
  7. Hardee's
  8. Carls Jr.
  9. Whataburger
  10. Steak and Shake
  11. Five Guys
  12. Culver's
  13. Checkers/Rally's
  14. White Castle
  15. In-and-Out
  16. Krystal

I haven't eaten at all these chains as some of them are limited to certain portions of the country. But Krystal? I've never even heard of them.

According to Petrostrategies.org, the largest oil and gas companies in the world by reserves are
  1. Saudi Aramco
  2. National Iranian Oil Company
  3. Qatar General Petroleum Corporation
  4. Iraq National Oil Company
  5. Petroleos de Venezuela
  6. Abu Dhabi National Oil Company
  7. Kuwait National Petroleum Company
  8. Nigerian National Petroleum Company
  9. National Oil Company of Libya
  10. Sonatrach (Algeria)
  11. Gazprom
  12. Rosneft
  13. Petrochina
  14. Petronas
  15. Lukoil
  16. Egyptian General Petroleum
  17. ExxonMobil
So the next time you are tempted to think of ExxonMobil as this HUGE company that has incredible influence and is leading us down an irreversible the path of petroleum dependency, climate change and pollution, and away from renewable energy and a green, sustainable future, think again. They are the equivalent to a burger chain that is smaller than Krystal. If the Krystal chain disappeared tomorrow, I wouldn't notice at all. If ExxonMobil disappeared tomorrow, would it really change anything? Nope.


Previous Years

October 29, 2013 - A New Chemistry Lab Building, But Without New Chemistry Jobs

October 29, 2012 - More Open Access articles in Polymers and Rheology

October 29, 2010 - Garbage Patch Vacuum Cleaners

October 29, 2010 - Good Advice

October 29, 2010 - UV Scale-up


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This perspective is a bit misleading. Exxon may not have the most oil reserves, but they do have more refineries than anyone else, and they're still the largest single company, by revenues, in the world. If Exxon lost its oil reserves but still managed to run its refineries at a profit, the world would not notice much, agreed, but if its refineries all went off the map simultaneously...