Exxon Mobil tops $500 billion

Exxon Mobil Corp. became the first publicly traded company valued above half a trillion dollars.

Shares of Exxon Mobil rose 2.7 percent pushing the market capitalization of the Irving-based company to $504.9 billion — more than the annual economic output of Argentina, Finland and Kazakhstan combined. A 40 percent gain in the past 12 months made Exxon Mobil 26 percent bigger than General Electric Co., the next largest U.S. company.

A bottleneck in U.S. refining capacity also helped earnings for integrated companies such as Exxon Mobil that produce, process and market petroleum.

[and Bush keeps giving the oil companies tax breaks]