It's good to be the king Big Oil

Try to brace yourself, because I know you're all going to faint from shock when you find out that Shell and Exxon are going to smash all previous profit records from their 2005 sales.

OIL companies on both sides of the Atlantic will gush record profits this week, with AmericaÂ’s Exxon Mobil posting the worldÂ’s biggest-ever profit, and Shell setting a new record for British companies.

Exxon is tomorrow expected to unveil a profit of about $32 billion (£18 billion) for 2005, according to Thomson Financial. It will be the largest single profit in the history of corporate America.

Here in New York, one of the big bones of contention in the current state budget and a platform point for all statewide offices up for grabs in the 2006 elections is whether or not the government will be putting more cash into the HEAP (Home Energy Assistance Program) legislation. The reason is that fuel prices, particularly for home heating oil, are on the rise again after a brief decline in November. When they were called in before Congress to explain their bloated profit portfolios, Big Oil execs cried poverty, citing how much of that money they had to reinvest in exploration and development. Conservative pundits rushed to their defense, crying that the government needed to stop "meddling" in the free market and let supply and demand take their "natural course." While both of those arguments can be appealing in a perfect world, it doesn't seem to be working out that way.

In November American oil firms were forced to justify their bulging third-quarter profits to Congress, where they tried to dissuade the US government from imposing a windfall tax on their gains. Exxon has long been a focal point for criticism, not least because the $34 billion in its coffers could pay for the construction of more than a dozen refineries.

The "free market" idea would work perfectly well and prices would actually stay as low as the market would bear if there were true competition in the industry. Unfortunately, Big Oil is a modern day Trust, marching in lockstep in the setting of prices and continually enabled by their supporters (and effectively paid servents) in the current administration who will never do anything to endanger the corporate coffers.

I really miss the old version of Air America's Morning Sedition on days like this. "Wake up, sheeple! The rats are running the cheese factory!"