Winner takes all the money???

LONDON (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSa.L) beat analysts' forecasts with a sharp rise in underlying profits on Thursday, as high oil prices more than compensated for production losses due to U.S. hurricanes.

ADVERTISEMENT The world's third-largest listed oil firm by market capitalization said in a statement that its current cost of supply (CCS) net profit, which strips out gains from rises in the value of fuel inventories, rose 68 percent to $7.369 billion.
Excluding one-off items of $1.569 billion, Shell's "clean" CCS earnings were $5.8 billion.
A Reuters poll of 10 analysts gave an average forecast of $5.12 billion for Shell's clean CCS profit.
Investors and analysts focus on the clean CCS figure, considering it the best measure of Shell's underlying health.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil Corp. on Thursday posted a quarterly profit of $9.9 billion, the largest in U.S. corporate history, as it raked in a bonanza from soaring oil and gas prices.

Record profits for Big Oil at a time when consumers are paying sky-high prices for gasoline have brought calls for a windfall profits tax or other penalties on oil companies.

The companies have been enjoying an unusually rosy environment for months. In the third quarter, oil prices and refining margins rose sharply after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ripped through the Gulf of Mexico, disrupting energy operations in the region.

While Exxon's quarterly profit was up 75 percent from a year earlier, and revenue rose 32 percent to more than $100 billion, the results fell short of Wall Street forecasts due to production outages caused by the hurricanes and sharply lower profit at the company's chemicals division.

"They were a bit disappointing, but this a temporary phenomenon," said Paul Kuklinski, an analyst with Boston Energy Research/Soleil Securities. "This is largely attributable to hurricane effects."

Exxon shares fell slightly in midday trade.

The world's largest publicly traded oil company said net income jumped to $9.92 billion, or $1.58 a share, from $5.68 billion, or 88 cents a share, a year earlier.
Excluding a gain of $1.62 billion from restructuring its stake in a Dutch