Because they derive more money from the gloabl crude reserves they own, and the petrochemical refining than they do gasoline. gasoline is a drop in the bucket for their profit portfolio. The price of their reserves followed the price of the futures and thus the value of the company ran along with it.
XOM LOST money on their downstream operations ( refining ) because they don't produce ALL of the crude that they refine. They must go out into the markets and BUY crude at the spot market price to then refine it and distribute it to retailers. Also, their revenue sharing agreements with the likes of Russia and Venezuela are not what you would think them to be . . . They actually get LESS PROFIT-SHARING as the price of crude goes higher with these nationalized arrangements. It's easy to simply "throw-out" a blanket generalization and pass it off for "certainty", but I would suggest that the oil market, and the refined products that come from that market are far more COMPLEX than most of us can even begin to comprehend. Papa's last post is "spot" on.
Good answers. I certainly would like to understand the complexities of oil profits in more detail, and hopefully I'll get a chance to study them in more detail one of these days. The problem I have with complexity, is that it generally equates to obfuscation of the true process (CDOs were pretty complex). About the only facts I can be certain about in this case are EPS of XOM (which I assume is fact), and the price of gas(which we know to be pretty much fact)-- both of which almost doubled (~70%%) in lockstep over the period during which gas peaked. I certainly agree with the fact that any generalization outside of that is spurious correlation.
Due to accounting calculations. Oil companies are using most expensive inventory for sale, therefore cost of goods sold is high which means lower profit and lower taxes. Revenue(+) Cost of goods sold (-) income before tax (earnings before income tax (EBIT)) Tax (-) Net income Tax is calculated on income before tax.