Oil companies that are trying to expand into Nigeria face a significant roadblock in the form of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND. This Nigerian militant group has threatened to destroy a planned trans-Saharan pipeline project, if it is ever built.
 
MEND has specifically warned Agip, Total, and Exxon Mobil, the three companies still operating in the Niger Delta, that they have three days to leave before new attacks may be launched. Chevron has already cancelled operations in the area because of several attacks on its onshore operations.
 
Niger and Nigeria have already forged an agreement to …read more

In both 2007 and 2008, Wal-Mart was on top of the Fortune 500, while Exxon Mobil finished in second place. For 2009, Exxon Mobil leapfrogged Wal-Mart and is now first while Wal-Mart finished in the second slot.
The Fortune 500 is released by Fortune magazine on a yearly basis and it lists the 500 richest corporations in the United States by using gross revenue as the measure. This year, Exxon Mobile topped the list with more than $440 billion in revenue. Wal-Mart was second with revenue of more than $405 billion.
Overall, the national economic woes was felt in the Fortune …read more

This is the third time I have written about Exxon Mobil breaking the record for the largest profit ever reported by a U.S. corporation and I’ve only been blogging since April!
This time Exxon Mobil reported net income of $14.83 billion for the third quarter of 2008.  The new record reflects a 58 percent increase in profits over the same quarter last year.  Wall Street’s response: XOM shares traded up 0.54 percent.
With profits like this, wouldn’t you expect Exxon Mobil’s stock to have a record-breaking year?
Ironically, the opposite is true.  In 2008, shares of Exxon Mobil have fallen 19 percent.
In taking a look at Exxon Mobil …read more

Welcome to Technical Tuesdays!!! 
Everyone is familiar with Big Oil, so I decided to kick off Techie Tuesdays with Exxon Mobil.  Exxon Mobil has been the focus of much media attention for their record profits but, does that mean you should buy the stock?
Today, I will use the simple moving average to evaluate Exxon Mobil.  The moving average is the average closing price of a stock over a set number of days. You can calculate the moving average for any number of days, most people calculate it somewhere between 5 and 200 days.  Each point on the moving average line represents several days worth …read more

Exxon Mobil has posted the largest quarterly profit ever for a corporation in the United States: $11.68 billion.  The company held the previous record and this is beginning to sound like a broken record!
Exxon Mobil’s record earnings should come as no surprise, as they were mainly driven by record crude oil prices. 
The second quarter results revealed that revenues were up 40 percent and profits were up 14 percent but, shares of oil company are trading down today because investors and analysts expected more.  
If $11.68 billion is not enough, what is?