I agree with you, but I’d be curious to see what is included in the largest line item in that list (”All Other Taxes”). Do royalties paid to the government for extraction operations on public land get counted with this?
When I look back at their 2006 information, where more details are available, it appears that royalties are excluded from the numbers by reducing the production volumes by such. There has been a growing trend to pay royalties with liquid-in-kind. There is less arguement over the value. Alaska has done this for many years. The state then sells their portion of the oil directly to the refinery. It is up to the state to get the best price for the oil produced. And in Alaska’s case, the buyer and the producer are separate companies so there is less concern of a conflict of interest deal.
http://exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Files/Corporate/fo_2006.pdf
See footnote (1) page 56