Big Oil Tops Fortune 500

NEW YORK -- The Fortune 500 list of largest corporations showed a number of shakeups among companies' rank on the list, but none larger than the top spot, which saw ExxonMobil, last year's No. 1 company, drop to second place in favor of Wal-Mart, a company that has taken the highest seat for the fifth time in six years.

ExxonMobil earned $347.25 billion in revenue and $39.5 billion in profits in 2006, outpacing Wal-Mart in profit, but not in revenue, where the retail giant generated $351.1 billion in 2006. ExxonMobil topped the list of Top 20 Most Profitable Companies within the Top 500, due to high crude oil prices, according to Fortune.

A number of other energy and petroleum companies achieved spots on Fortune Magazine's Fortune 500 list of largest corporations, including Top 10 finishers Chevron and ConocoPhillips. Chevron, with $200.5 billion in revenue, narrowly beat out ConocoPhillips for fourth place on the list, the same seat it held in 2006. ConocoPhillips moved up one spot from last year to fifth place, with $172.4 billion in revenue, and placed eighth on the list of Most Profitable Companies.

The next energy company to make the list was No. 16, Valero Energy, which also placed first on the list of best big companies to work for. The company dropped one spot on the Fortune 500 due to low fourth-quarter numbers on lower oil prices.

Marathon Oil dropped seven spots, from 23 to 30, even though earnings jumped 73 percent to $5.2 billion. The drop was attributed to lower fourth quarter revenue, leaving sales up 3 percent for the year.

Next on the list was Sunoco, placing 60th, up six spots from last year with $979 million in profits for 2006. Finishing up the Top 100 was Hess, at No. 75.

Placing 128 on the Fortune 500 was Tesoro, up four spots from last year, when the company ranked 132. Murphy Oil, the petroleum product supplier for Wal-Mart gas locations across the country, ranked 169 on the list, a leap from its 2006 seat of 193.

Filling out the list of Top 500 corporations was The Pantry Inc., at No. 436. The company was the only convenience retailer not associated with an oil company to make the list, with $5.2 billion in revenue and $89 million in earnings in 2006. Making the Top 500 is a first for the company.
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