From Yahoo! Finance -BP PLC and Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Europe’s two biggest oil producers, posted forecast-busting first-quarter earnings on Tuesday thanks to record crude oil prices that are expected to bolster profits across the industry.

The combined profits of $17 billion reignited calls for a windfall tax on oil profits as consumers struggle to pay for food and fuel.

BP posted a 63 percent surge in first-quarter net profit to $7.6 billion (4.9 billion euros), while Shell reported a 25 percent rise, to a record $9.08 billion (5.81 billion euros).Shell’s earnings from oil production rose 52 percent to $5.14 billion (3.3 billion euros), due almost entirely to the price increases. The company said combined production of gas and oil equivalents increased by less than 1 percent to 3.4 million barrels per day, as a 9 percent rise in gas production outweighed a 6 percent fall in oil production.

Shell’s Chief Financial Officer Peter Voser said oil companies are not to blame.

“We don’t understand the oil price at this stage,” he said. “The fundamentals will not justify an oil price as we see it at the moment.”

“It seems that better marketing and trading were able to offset the weak refining environment,” analyst Alexandre Weinberg of Petercam.

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Marketing and trading, huh? That’s spot on. The fundamentals don’t justify these kinds of prices, but profits do, so that means the oil companies aren’t to blame. Back in the 70′s during that oil crisis, the oil companies kept tankers on the water that were full of oil and gas, just to keep the price pressure on, now they have the marketers and traders to keep the price pressure up. This is a perfect storm for them…high prices, blame the market, don’t ever suggest that the crisis is really not a crisis. Keep that momentum going. This is what happens when there are 2 or 3 big players in an industry. The government has shorn their duties with respect to anti-trust. it’s time to show them we aren’t going to take it anymore. Cut back wherever you can.

Maybe we should refresh out thinking on monopolies.

From The Linux Information Project:

Standard Oil Company

In 1870, Rockefeller, together with his brother William, Henry M. Flagler and Samuel Andrews, established the Standard Oil Company of Ohio. This occurred while the petroleum refining industry was still highly decentralized, with more than 250 competitors in the U.S.

The company almost immediately began using a variety of cutthroat techniques to acquire or destroy competitors and thereby “consolidate” the industry…

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