Anyone else think it is outrageous for a billionaire oil company to set a new quarterly profits record -the highest in all US history - while gas prices are still over $4 a gallon for gas through most of the country? The inflation the increase in the cost of gas has caused means that the working poor and elderly on fixed incomes that were barely making it previously are now simply not making it at all. In the meantime, the number one money grubber -the CEO - is making over $25 million a year. M

Exxon Mobil 2Q profit sets US record


By JOHN PORRETTO, AP Business Writer

Exxon Mobil 2Q profit sets US record, shares fall - Yahoo! News


Exxon Mobil Corp. reported second-quarter earnings of $11.68 billion Thursday, the biggest quarterly profit ever by any U.S. corporation, but the results were well short of Wall Street expectations and its shares fell.

The world's largest publicly traded oil company said net income for the April-June period came to $2.22 a share, up from $10.26 billion, or $1.83 a share, a year ago.

Revenue rose 40 percent to $138.1 billion from $98.4 billion in the year-earlier quarter.

Excluding an after-tax charge of $290 million related to an Exxon Valdez court settlement, earnings amounted to $11.97 billion, or $2.27 per share.

Analysts on average expected Exxon Mobil to earn $2.52 a share on revenue of $144 billion, according to a survey by Thomson Financial. The estimates typically exclude one-time items.

The record-setting results were largely expected, given that crude prices in the second quarter were nearly double what they were a year ago. Natural gas prices were significantly higher too.

But investors expected even bigger profits Thursday, especially after Europe's Royal Dutch Shell reported a 33 percent jump in second-quarter earnings to $11.6 billion, which fell just shy of Exxon's own record earnings from 2007.

Exxon Mobil shares fell $2.24, or 2.6 percent, to $82,14 in morning trading.

Setting U.S. profit records has become commonplace for Irving-based Exxon Mobil. The $11.68 billion topped its own U.S. record of $11.66 billion, posted in the fourth quarter of last year. Right behind that was the $10.9 billion it reported to start 2008.

Exxon Mobil owns the record for at least the top six most-profitable quarters for a U.S. company, as well as the largest annual profit.

The company, which produces 3 percent of the world's oil, got its biggest boost from its exploration and production arm, where earnings rose 68 percent to $10.01 billion from $5.95 billion a year ago. The main driver was record crude prices, partially offset by lower sales volumes and higher operating costs.

Once again, Exxon Mobil's results revealed a troubling trend at the heart of its business.

Production on an oil-equivalent basis fell 8 percent from a year ago — a significant blow for a company that generates more than two-thirds of its earnings from oil and gas production. That follows an opening quarter of 2008 when the company said overall production fell 5.6 percent from a year ago.

Excluding last year's loss of its Venezuelan assets, a labor strike in Nigeria and lower volumes because of production-sharing contracts, Exxon said production was down about 3 percent in the most-recent quarter.

Like its competitors, Exxon Mobil said it took a beating from lower global refining margins. Earnings from refining and marketing fell 54 percent in the quarter to $1.55 billion.

For the first six months of 2008, Exxon Mobil said it earned $22.57 billion, or $4.25 a share, from $19.54 billion, or $3.45 a share, in the first half of 2007. Revenue rose to $254.9 billion from $185.5 billion.

__________________
National Debt =

Careful what you say. Grumbling about Exxon's profits is class warfare, y'know.

Me? I'm just happy as a clam to have to make do with less so that the nice folks at Exxon can have even more. [/sarcasm]

__________________
January 20, 2009 - The end of an error.

Class warfare? I am for forming a lynch mob. These profits are nothing less than obscene.

__________________
National Debt =

You're looking at this the wrong way. Exxon's profits is proof that Bush's economic policies are working...don't laugh, there are people who believe that. They believed it about the S&Ls under Reagan. They believed it about Enron and subprime under Bush. So wait for it...wait for the "pop."

__________________
I'm Proud I never Voted For Bush!



PAT PAULSEN FOR PRESIDENT

Maybe now they have enough to pay for the Valdez clean-up.

__________________
You meet the same folks on the way up as you do on the way down.

Careful, someone will be stopping by to call you a - gasp! - communist for your sentiments!

__________________
January 20, 2009 - The end of an error.

Yeah, right.

__________________
January 20, 2009 - The end of an error.

I have been called much worse in my lifetime. In this case, it only identifies someone as a Joe McCarthy fanatic left over from the 1950's.

__________________
National Debt =

What payment? The right wingers on the USSC are taking care of that...

__________________
I'm Proud I never Voted For Bush!



PAT PAULSEN FOR PRESIDENT

Joe McCarthy was in his heyday when I was a small child, but I remember hearing lots about the "Red Menace" in grade school. To my child's way of thinking back then, I wondered why, if commies were so bad, we didn't just put them in jail.

__________________
January 20, 2009 - The end of an error.