Big Oil and the Trillion-Dollar War Bonus
excerpted from, “Armed Madhouse” (Penguin 2006)
It has been a very good war for Big Oil — courtesy of OPEC price hikes. The five oil giants saw profits rise from $34 billion in 2002 to $81 billion in 2004, year two of Iraq’s “transition to democracy.”
But this tsunami of black ink was nothing compared to the wave of $113 billion in profits to come in 2005: $13.6 billion for Conoco, $14.1 billion for Chevron and the Mother of All Earnings, Exxon’s $36.1 billion.