Exxon Mobil posts $40.6 billion annual profit, breaks record for largest annual profit by a U.S. company Options

[dauss]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22949325/

HOUSTON - Exxon Mobil Corp. on Friday posted the largest annual profit by a U.S. company — $40.6 billion — as the world's largest publicly traded oil company benefited from historic crude prices at year's end.

Exxon also set a U.S. record for the biggest quarterly profit, posting net income of $11.7 billion for the final three months of 2007, besting its own mark of $10.71 billion in the fourth quarter of 2005.

The previous record for annual profit was $39.5 billion, which Exxon Mobil reported for 2006.

The eye-popping results weren't a surprise given record prices for a barrel of oil at the end of 2007. For much of the fourth quarter, they hovered around $90 a barrel, more than 50 percent higher than a year ago.

Crude prices reached an all-time trading high of $100.09 on Jan. 3 but have fallen about 10 percent since.

The record profit for the October-December period amounted to $2.13 a share versus $1.76 a share in 2006. Year-ago net income was $10.25 billion.

Also extraordinary was Exxon Mobil's revenue, which rose 30 percent in the fourth quarter to $116.6 billion from $90 billion a year ago.

For the year, sales rose to $404.5 billion — the most ever for the Irving, Texas-based company — from the $377.64 billion it posted in 2006.

In a statement, Exxon Mobil Chairman Rex Tillerson said the company continued to meet the world's energy needs through its "globally diverse resource base."

"Our long-term investment program, in projects often far from major consuming nations, continued to provide resources essential to the increasingly interdependent global energy supply network," Tillerson said.

Exxon Mobil produces about 3 percent of the world's oil.

[Testm0nkey]

wind power is pretty efficient already and becoming more and more. hell out at reese an international company is setting up studies for new wind harnessing energy techniques that are supposed to be cheaper nad better. and besides it wont ever cover all of the US because not everywhere in the US is a good source for wind

you lower peoples use of energy and wind power in addition to other clean sources can work. americans waste soooo much energy.