[You Dirty Rats]

Exxon Mobil does NOT make most of their money selling gasoline in the United States. 68% of their profit is from overseas sources. Most of their US profit stems from upstream operations, not downstream operations.

Gasoline retailing is a totally different business than petroleum production and refining. Many gas stations make more money selling out of their mini-marts than out of selling gas. The markup on a gas station Twinkee is a lot higher than on unleaded gas.

[AxelPaulsenJr]

They must sell a lot of Twinkies.

[stockstrader]

Great point. Never mind that most profits come from overseas (last year XOM made 75% of its profits from overseas)--and that US oil companies only control 2% of the world oil market. Or that XOM spent almost $5/billion in research and capital equipment looking for new oil in the first three months of this year alone.

Some just don't want to be bothered with facts--it's so much easier to express 'populist outrage'.