Hulleye Comes By!

so the fortune 500 list just got published again for this year. surprise surprise with oil at $55+/barrel, guess which 5 of the companies in the top 10 do for a living. oh and i hope you realize, that to even make it into the top 500 these days, your company needs to be churning at the very least $12.4 Billion in revenues. Notice the top 50 alone, the highlighted bold ones are petroleum and oil based companies. they had a good year last year it seems.

BP saw its revenues rise 23%, to $285.1 billion, faster than Wal-Mart’s, which were up a relatively meager 9.5%. That allowed the British oil company to come within just $2.9 billion of usurping Wal-Mart as the world’s biggest company. “It’s kind of amazing, isn’t it?” says CEO John Browne, flipping through the company’s annual report at his office in London. (In 1995, before it acquired Amoco and Arco, BP ranked No. 31 on the overall list, with $51 billion in revenues.)

But not even BP, whose profits jumped 50% last year, was able to outshine Exxon Mobil as the world’s most profitable company. Exxon posted $25.3 billion in profits, a record for a Global 500 company. Other oil majors also scored big. Despite its widely publicized reserves troubles, Royal Dutch/ Shell saw its revenues grow 33% and its profits soar 46%. Revenues were up 29% at both Total and Chevron.

This is sickening.

i’ve been checking out badmash from time to time. they have some awesome weekly webcomics (which also have rss feeds). this one video over on their site is really kind of fun. anyone who speaks or understands a bit of gujrati will enjoy it even more. it speaks rather solemnly of desi’s who are stuck between serving the homeland or going out to the land of freedom.

i’ve posted a bit about the recent plane crash at Toronto airport with photos over at the toronto metroblog in case anyone is interested.