About Me
High prices for crude oil, gasoline and natural gas helped Exxon Mobil Corp. to its highest-ever quarterly profit, $9.92 billion, up 75 percent from the third quarter last year, the company said yesterday. Profit in the third quarter at the world's largest publicly traded oil company set an industry record, and its sales of $100.72 billion were the highest in a quarter by U.S. company, according to Standard & Poor's.By Justin Blum Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, October 28, 2005; Page D01NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - The world's biggest company is also a very big target. Even as it battles environmental critics and political opponents, Exxon (which leads this year's Fortune 500), is fighting hard to please Wall Street analysts, boost profits even further and increase its already staggering level of oil and gas production. With $339.9 billion in revenue and profits of $36.1 billion, Exxon (Research) earned more than any U.S. company in history last year -- more than the profits of the next four companies on the FORTUNE 500 combined. Exxon's return to No. 1 caps its emergence as not only the biggest but also the most powerful U.S. corporation by just about any metric. (This is an excerpt from a story in the April 17 issue of FORTUNE. To read the complete story, click here or go to www.fortune.com.) Last year, Exxon surpassed General Electric (Research) to become the most valuable U.S. company by market capitalization ($375 billion). It pumps almost twice as much oil and gas a day as Kuwait, and its energy reserves stretch across six continents and are larger than those of any nongovernment company on the planet.By Nelson D. Schwartz, FORTUNE Europe editor April 3, 2006: 10:00 AM EDT
