WaPo:

In an announcement that fueled partisan sniping on Capitol Hill, Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest oil company, said today its first-quarter profits hit $8.4 billion, up 7 percent from a year ago.

Although the net earnings fell below some analysts’ expectations, they still gave the Texas-based oil giant the fifth-highest quarterly profits ever recorded by a publicly traded company.

Three of the other quarterly profits in the top 5 also belong to Exxon—$10.7 billion for the fourth quarter of 2005, $9.9 billion for the third quarter of 2005, and $8.4 billion for the fourth quarter of 2004.

The other one? Royal Dutch Shell’s $9 billion profit for the third quarter of 2005.

Anybody see any kind of pattern here?