Marathon's second-quarter results

Marathon Oil Corp. released its second-quarter earnings report today. Some highlights from the Tri-State's only oil refiner:

> Net income was $1.748 billion for the quarter, compared with $673 million for the same quarter last year.

> In refining, marketing and transportation, profit was just shy of 30 cents a gallon, compared with just shy of 16 cents a gallon same quarter last year. For the first six months of 2006, per-gallon profit was a bit short of 21 cents, up from about 11.6 cents last year. This is for gasoline, propane, heavy fuel oil and other products the company refines from crude.

> At Speedway SuperAmerica, the company reported profits of about 10.2 cents per gallon sold, down from 12.1 cents at this time last year. Profits are better on the merchandising side (beer, cigarettes, candy, etc.) than on the gasoline side. In the second quarter, Speedway earned $171 million on sales of $690 million.

If my math is correct and I'm using the right numbers, Speedway earned about 25 percent profit on merchandise sales and far less than that on gasoline.

Before you ask, I don't know if the 10.2 cents profit on gasoline is part of the 29.78 cents profit on all refined products or if it is in addition to it.