Lubing up the Economy and Screwing It

Yes, dear B&E readers, it remains a good time to be in the oil business.

Yesterday Shell announced that 2007 was its best year ever, with more than $27.6 billion in profits. CEO Jeroen van der Veer said in his understated (read: Dutch) way that these results were "satisfactory." Trade unionists in Britain called the amount "obscene," and suggested that perhaps they pay a windfall tax.

Not to be outdone, on Friday ExxonMobil said, "You don't know obscene," and announced the most profitable quarter and year of any U.S. company in the history of the entire world. That's $11.66 billion in one quarter, friends, and more than $40.6 billion for the year.

Proving the Bush administration theory that we all benefit when the free market is given free reign to make as much money as possible (and the people who profit most from these corporations are given generous tax breaks), payrolls are dropping and the economy is in a tailspin. Oh, wait. I'm sorry. That disproves the theory. My mistake.

And I'm sure that getting a windfall tax passed in a government owned by Big Oil (and Big Industry in general) will be no problem at all. None. Nothing will ever be easier. Especially if no one ever proposes the idea.

In related news, most of you are already aware of an old B&E posting of mine, which named former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson Dickhead of the Week. Yes, it remains a popular destination for new readers, most of whom anonymously invite me to have sex with myself for misspelling Mobil or for being jealous or for being a prick.

I'd like to draw your attention, then, to a comment that arrived today, which I quote in its entirety:

I would like to say to Rex Tillerson and the people who are defending him what about the exxon-valdez oil spill? I am a wife of a fisherman and i think it is about time they quit being greedy pigs and pay what is owed us after reading there profit shares i want to puke BOYCOTT EXXON MOBILE
Randa

Well put, Randa, and I would like to thank you for reminding all B&E readers that ExxonMobil has still not paid a single penny of what they owe for the Exxon-Valdez oil spill. That spill was back in 1989. Unconscionable.

ExxonMobil: Redefining "Dickhead."