Stock Research

Marathon Oil (NYSE:MRO) is a global integrated energy company that drills for, refines and sells oil and natural gas . Although the company sells some of the crude oil that it produces to other refineries, it makes most of its money from the sale of its finished petroleum products (gasoline, lubricants, heating oil) to resellers and to consumers through its own retail locations. The critical shortage of refining capacity within the U.S., where strict environmental regulations have prevented the construction of new refineries since 1976, and growing oil demand have supported healthy refining and marketing margins in recent years. Moreover, as oil prices have continued to rise, labor and technologically intensive projects such as deep sea drilling and oil sands have become more economically feasible. The company earned $53 billion in revenue and $1.5 billion in net income in 2009.^[1]

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