This Angry Bear post provides a good overview of the probable impact of current oil prices on the American economy, which segues nicely to this recent Wall Street Journal ($) interview with ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond, in which he observes the following:

WSJ: What do you think of ChevronTexaco’s decision to acquire Unocal?
Mr. Raymond: I can never remember an industry consolidating at high prices. But I can remember an industry consolidating at low prices.
WSJ: Some people think prices will keep going up.
Mr. Raymond: Maybe. I’ll bet they’ll be lower at some point.
Let me go back to the last time we went through something like this, which started when the shah of Iran was around. [The shah went into exile in 1979.]
A lot of people don’t remember, but we went through a period of relatively high oil prices, which by today’s standard would be very high oil prices, that lasted for almost five years. It was at that time that we got into our first stock-buyback program.
As today, we had very strong cash flows. There were a lot of people that were talking about buying other companies. Although we didn’t say it directly at that time, we had a view that the price structure could not last — that it was fundamentally unstable, and that it was just a matter of time. And so we concluded that the cheapest oil we could buy was our own. But because of the stock-buyback program, we were roundly criticized on Wall Street. There were no opportunities. We were liquidating the company. All that kind of stuff.
But the facts are that, behind the scenes — we were not going to say it publicly, obviously — we just felt that the price structure couldn’t persist. And, come along December of 1985, it just collapsed. Went from $28 to $10 in two weeks. So when people ask today, what are you going to do with the money, my answer is: We’re not going to do anything stupid. We’re going to manage it like we’ve managed everything else.
WSJ: What is Exxon planning to do with all its cash?
Mr. Raymond: First of all, we’ll sort through it. And secondly, why in the world would we ever tell anybody in advance what we were going to do with it anyway?

The fluctuation of oil prices is a common topic on this blog, and prior posts on the topic can be reviewed here.