How crazy are oil company profits?

Take a look at Exxon Mobil's blog post Gas prices and industry earnings: A few things to think about the next time you fill up:

For every gallon of gasoline, diesel or finished products we manufactured and sold in the United States in the last three months of 2010, we earned a little more than 2 cents per gallon. That’s not a typo. Two cents. ... The main component of the price at the pump is the cost of a barrel of crude oil. Another major component of the price of gas is state and federal taxes, which range from a high of 66 cents per gallon in California to a low of 26 cents per gallon in Alaska, according to January 2011 data.

Compare Exxon revenue per unit of gas sold to fuel taxes. Look as well at their claims about taxes paid:

Over the past five years, we incurred a total U.S. tax expense of almost $59 billion, which is $18 billion more than we earned in the United States during the same period.

I tend to think they're write about the so-called subsidies largely being them allowed to write off their purchases in a similar manner to other industries' ability to do so.

Exxon Mobil mentions that they don't really own a lot of oil reserves - ergo they need to pay for crude oil. I'm guessing in most places even if private companies are doing the extraction, they probably don't own the reserves and/or must pay substantial taxes on what they extract.