For the record, Exxon reported a quarterly profit of $10 billion and revenues of more than $100 billion.

Even before the company announced its results, critics such as Hillary Clinton, junior Democratic senator for New York, and a likely candidate as the next president of the United States claimed, that "if we don''t fight big oil, this country''s going down".

"You just cannot convince me that they are not manipulating this market," she said. "We''re not going to have the standard of living and the quality of life, and we''re not going to be able to control our future." Her comments came in a speech to a group of clean energy investors and other environmental activists.

Earlier this month Credit Suisse First Boston said the world''s five biggest oil firms may report combined net income of $26 billion for the third quarter, up 23 per cent from a year earlier and equal to the economic output of Hungary.

Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Conoco Phillips and Exxon have all reported such a large increase in profits this year that collectively they are expected to have made $100 billion by the end of this year.

The laws of supply and demand had pushed oil prices to $60 a barrel even before the winds of Hurricane Katrina shut down production in the Gulf of Mexico and disrupted petrol supplies across the whole country. But the subsequent jump in the price consumers were paying at the pump led to the inevitable allegations of price gouging and growing calls for a windfall tax on the oil majors'' profits.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc, the hardest-hit oil company by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last month, reported that its profit rose to $9 billion, a record in corporate history, because of the sale of a Dutch pipeline network and surging energy prices. Its Mars offshore platform, which pumped about five per cent of its oil, will stay shut for at least eight more months of repairs, the company said.

Shell''s Q3 net income was about twice that of General Electric Co, the world''s biggest company by market value. Shell is the sixth-biggest by value. Chief executive Jeroen van der Veer said on Thursday that Shell is resuming oil output faster than expected after hurricanes in the US Gulf of Mexico shut most of the region''s energy industry.

Lord Browne of Madingley, chairman of BP, said a few months of high oil prices did not mean the world had moved to a high oil price environment and that the laws of supply and demand would move the price down to around $40 a barrel in the medium term. A recent poll showed nine out of 10 Americans feel they are getting gouged by big oil companies, while four out of five support a tax on the windfall profits of oil companies if the resulting revenues are devoted to alternative energy research.