Even after accounting for lost sales and damages to its rigs and refineries and pipelines in the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast region, the third-quarter results were nothing less than breathtaking. Exxon Mobil was up 75 percent over the comparable quarter last year, to $9.9 billion. Royal Dutch Shell up 68 percent, to $9 billion. BP up 34 percent, to $6.5 billion. ConocoPhillips up 89 percent, to $3.8 billion. And pulling up the rear, poor Chevron, up a mere 12 percent, to $3.6 billion.

Although Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) warned the companies that they would be held to account if they were caught gouging consumers, there is little or no evidence that they have. And why should they? The normal dynamics of a market characterized by too little supply, and too much demand, increases profit margins naturally. Whether or not that's a "windfall" -- as Democrats claimed it was -- is a matter of politics and semantics, not economics.

Anticipating the political backlash, oil companies launched advertising and public-relations campaigns to urge conservation and highlight their investments in alternative sources of energy. They also trotted out charts showing that, even with the recent increases, industry profits are merely middling. When pressed by Fox News, Lee R. Raymond, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, rejected any notion that his company's profits were "obscene."