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Energy – 0.9 percent.
The oil companies therefore enjoyed 13.95% of all the most profitable categories of American
businesses in 2008.
Together, oil and pharmaceuticals occupy 13 out of 43 slots on the Fortune 500 list of the most
profitable American industries – or a stunning 30.23 percent of all the money there is to be made.
THE OIL COMPANIES ARE THE MOST PROFITABLE INDIVIDUAL BUSINESSES
Remember – the above figures only tell us how strong of a profit each of these industries is making. If
you invested in an industry that was making 20 percent profit per year, you’d be very happy.
This doesn’t actually tell us how much money they are pulling in. If you had a company that cost ten
dollars to run, and you made twelve dollars a year, you’d still be making a 20 percent profit.
In order to figure out how much actual money is being made, you have to look at individual businesses.
Here is a link to the Fortune 500 list of the 50 most profitable American businesses in 2010:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2011/performers/companies/profits/
The single most profitable American corporation in 2010 was Exxon Mobil -- earning 30 billion, 460
million dollars.
Chevron comes in behind AT&T to take third place at 19 billion, 24 million dollars.
ConocoPhillips was #16 at 11 billion, 358 million. Devon Energy and Occidental Petroleum both made
4.5 billion.
Add it all together and you get 69 billion, 842 million dollars in oil profits for 2010 alone – basically
70 billion – and that’s only the oil companies in America’s top 50.
INTERNATIONAL LISTINGS CHANGE THE PICTURE
The Fortune 500 list only applies to American industries.
You have to go international to include the non-American “supermajor” oil companies – namely BP,
Royal Dutch Shell and Total S.A. – each of which are also very substantial – in addition to the
American-based Chevron, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips.
The full international list with all these companies included is called the Forbes Global 2000. This
gives us a better overall sense of what’s going on in the world – but it still only tracks companies that
have to publicly report their earnings.
Eight out of the top 20 largest international companies are banks: JP Morgan Chase, HSBC (UK),
ICBC (China), Citigroup, BNP Paribas (France), Wells Fargo, Banco Santander (Spain) and China