New column: ExxonMobil likes paying its shareholders more than drilling for oil

My latest column is in the issue of Time with an ice-cream sundae on the cover and online here. It begins:

In January 1981, as gasoline prices set all-time highs in the wake of the Iran-Iraq war, oil giant Exxon announced that it would pour $11 billion into capital investment and exploration over the course of the year. That was a 35% increase over 1980 and a tripling of the budget from 1973, the year when the Arab oil embargo first sent prices skyrocketing. "The $11 billion is almost three times the profit we made in 1979," a company vice president told a reporter.

You probably know what happened next: conservation and a global recession--and the gusher of new oil produced by all that capital spending by Exxon and its brethren--sent prices plummeting.

Today, though, prices at the pump in the U.S., adjusted for inflation, are approaching those record 1981 levels for the first time. The company now called ExxonMobil turned a profit of $39.5 billion last year (on sales of $365.4 billion), more than any other corporation ever. Yet it isn't making nearly the investment in finding new oil that it did in 1981. Read more.

The column was based mainly on hours and hours spent trolling through ExxonMobil's financial statements. Consider it an homage to Allan Sloan, that great peruser of documents who is leaving Newsweek for Fortune. But don't blame him if you think it's all wet.