Knifey,
You know I love you like a brother...so I am not picking on you...but the Exxon thing...
What we need to remember is that they are also selling record amounts of gas, and their margins are the same - so if you are selling more gallons, and your costs are the same percentage because you increase the price to keep them the same, but the dollars are higher in absolute terms, so then the profits will be a new larger number.
I don't think there's any hocus pocus involved here...no collusion...just simple math and the additional turd in the toilet bowl of "speculators"...yes, that's right...commodities buyers who drive up the price of crude by 30 dollars a barrel "betting" that supplies will be cut, or a refinery will go down...another by-product of the now famous Hurricane Katrina..and our middle east troubles and lack of home-grown use of resources.