On the face of it, these are the best of times for oil companies.
First Exxon Mobil reports 2005 profits of $33.8bn (£19bn), the biggest surplus in corporate history. Then, today, Shell delivers profits of $22.9bn, a record for a UK company.
The oil companies have been making money hand over fist because crude prices soared last year, bumped up by political uncertainties in the Middle East and high demand in Asia.
Even the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico worked to the oil companies' advantage, as disruption to their production and refining activities pushed crude prices to record levels - about $70 at their peak.
But, instead of getting pats on the back - companies are supposed to make money in a market economy - Shell has been deluged by criticism from consumer groups, unions and environmentalists.
Shell's announcement that it would use some of the profit to return up to $5bn to investors through share buybacks - a move that in turn would benefit UK pension funds - cut little ice with its critics.
The Road Haulage Association, for example, said it viewed the announcement on profits with mixed feelings.
Its chief executive, Roger King, said: "One could take some pride that a British company is doing well, but how much of this profit is generated by sweat and how much because of the record price of a barrel of oil? We suspect it is the latter."
Meanwhile, he added, road hauliers, hampered by the corresponding high price of diesel, could barely make ends meet, with more and more of them going out of business.
The environmental group Friends of the Earth said Shell was profiting from climate change - and people and the environment were paying the price. FoE repeated its call for a windfall tax on oil company profits, with the revenue invested in renewable technologies.
But once you get beyond the headlines of bumper profits, the picture looks a little less rosy for Shell. The company is failing to match the oil it takes out of the ground with new discoveries.
The reserve-replacement ratio as it is called was 60-70%. Companies target a rate of at least 100% to avoid depletion of their asset base and the suggestion that their business is eroding.
Shell, which was struck by scandal when it overstated its reserves in 2004, is under pressure from investors for its poor reserve-replacement rate. It achieved a rate less than 49% in 2004, excluding divestments, or 19% including divestments.
Such figures inevitably feed into the debate over "peak oil", the notion that the world is running out of cheap oil. George Bush did not mention the phrase in his state of the union message, but he did cite America's "addiction" to oil and said it was time to develop alternatives such as ethanol, fuel made from corn.
On its website, Shell today made a point of mentioning its effort in developing renewables. The company said it invested over $1bn in alternative energies, "making it one of the world's leading companies in the sector". It sounds a lot, but looks less impressive when set against its huge profit of last year.
You do not have to be an advocate of a windfall tax to see that Shell could invest a lot more in wind, solar and hydrogen.
"It would be short-termist and irresponsible for the big oil companies to pass over these sorts of high profits straight to shareholder," said Vince Cable, the Lib Dem Treasury spokesman. "They should reinvest a substantial proportion of these profits both in developing technology to increase oil supplies and in renewable energy sources."
