Record Profit for Exxon

Wonder if they were in the meeting with Dick Cheney when the Bush Administration energy policy was being written?

From The New York Times:

HOUSTON, Feb. 1 — Oil prices have fallen, but Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell left their smaller competitors in the dust and reported record annual profits Thursday.

By making $180 million a day between them, the two largest publicly traded oil companies displayed their ability to ramp up production worldwide over the year, even in unstable places like Chad and Nigeria. Growth may be slowing and is likely to continue to do so in the future, but these two companies showed they could navigate the year’s volatile energy prices that caused smaller companies to stumble in their fourth-quarter profits.

The expanding profits at Exxon Mobil and Shell, however, may also make them big targets for the Democratic Congress whose leaders want oil companies to pay higher taxes and work to curb global warming.