ExxonMobil, the largest publicly traded oil company in the world, is pulling out of the US gasoline market over the next few years. While the stations will still carry the Exxon or Mobil logos and pump their gasoline, the oil giant is looking to sell their US stations to private owners.

One analyst said that the current profits from Exxon’s retail unit are “somewhere close to a rounding error,” prompting the decision to follow competitors like Dutch Shell and British Petroleum out of the gas station business. While gasoline and convenience store sales are still enough to attract some small business owners, the profit margins have dropped too low for the large oil companies to retain interest.

Exxon spokeswoman Pam Nair called the current market “very, very challenging,” and noted that the best growth for the company lay in their refining and distributing capacities. Reuters.com reported that gasoline prices so far are up 31 percent from last year, while oil prices have nearly doubled.

This report comes on the heels of last month’s discussion of Exxon’s recent success. This year, Exxon reported record profits of $40 billion in 2007, up 3% from their (also record-breaking) 2006 profits. Oil companies composed three of the top five Fortune 500 companies in 2006, with ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips placing second, fourth, and fifth respectively.

However, Exxon’s record profits may not indicate an increase in revenue, but a decrease in costs. Many of the costs associated with the oil business are front-heavy, since the investment in developing an oil field is drastically smaller than the continuing production costs. Most of the new oil fields have been discovered abroad, where nationalized oil companies control exclusive rights to development and production. This has blocked Exxon’s ability to invest in new fields, leading to a decline in overall operating costs—and an apparent, though deceptive, increase in profits.