Oil Profits Embarrassing? Not Likely!

From CBC News Website, January 31, 2011
Exxon profit up 53%
The parent also reported Monday, with Exxon saying net income grew 53 per cent in the fourth quarter as oil prices rose and the company increased production.
The largest publicly traded oil company in the world on Monday reported earnings of $9.25 billion US, or $1.85 per share, the highest since its record profit of $14.8 billion in the third quarter of 2008. In the year-ago quarter, Exxon earned $6.05 billion, or $1.27 per share.
Shares of Calgary-based Imperial Oil Limited (The Canadian arm of Exxon) rose more than four per cent Monday after the integrated oil company reported fourth-quarter profits rose by 50 per cent.
Its stock ended trading Monday at $44.65, up $1.95 cents, or 4.6 per cent.
Earnings were helped by higher prices for crude oil, higher retail prices and improvements in refinery operations.
Net income for the three months ended Dec. 31 was $799 million, or 94 cents per share, compared with $534 million, or 64 cents per share, a year earlier.
Analysts polled by Thomson-Reuters were, on average, expecting 65 cents per share.
Revenue was $6.9 billion, up from $5.9 billion and above analyst expectations of $5.9 billion.
Earnings for the full year were $2.2 billion or $2.59 per share, up from $1,579 million in the full year 2009, an increase of 40 per cent.
Imperial, which is majority-owned by Houston-based ExxonMobil, is Canada's largest petroleum refiner and has 1,850 retail service stations across the country.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2011/01/31/imperial-oil-profits.html#ixzz1ChXGXtEOWith the price of oil well above $90 per barrel (CDN), on yesterday's markets, is it any wonder that the world is watching profits like these in the oil industry. While BP suffers from the Gulf of Mexico fiasco, other oil companies are getting richer faster than many other segments of the North American economy.
And for the ordinary motorist, in Canada, at least, yesterday we were paying something like $1.15 per litre, or well above $4 per gallon.
It is the disconnect between these prices and the relatively slow development of alternative energy vehicles that makes one wonder about the relationship between the auto companies and the oil companies.
We are continuously being bombarded by advertising from the oil companies, including Exxon, that they are working vigorously to develop alternative energies, and with profits like these, they should certainly be able to do many different things to continue their profit margins.
There is a kind of resigned inevitability to the attitudes of many ordinary motorists to the news of profits of this magnitude, while we all know that those rising prices will be passed on to the consumer of many goods and services that are depending on that same oil to reach their markets and their customers.
Is this another of the numerous indicators that continue to squeeze the general public, including rising food prices and rising heating costs and rising energy costs...coupled with falling or static wages...leading to an unsustainable equation for many people in many countries?
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2011/01/31/imperial-oil-profits.html#ixzz1ChWmRox9
From CNN Wire Staff, February 1, 2011
Oil giant BP suffered an annual loss for 2010 because of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it announced Tuesday.

It reported a loss of $4.9 billion, but that includes $40.9 billion set aside pre-tax in charges related to the spill.
It will also start paying dividends to shareholders again, it announced. They'll get 7 cents a share for the fourth quarter of 2010.