Dallas ? After recording the second-largest quarterly profit ever for a publicly traded company Thursday – $10.49 billion from July to September – Exxon Mobil Corp. is poised to deliver an even better performance through the remainder of this year.

Several years of high crude-oil prices have fueled record profits for the petroleum industry, even as they triggered complaints from consumers and Congress as gasoline pump prices surpassed $3 a gallon during the last two summers.

The largest quarterly performance already belongs to Exxon Mobil, for its $10.71 billion profit in the fourth quarter of 2005.

The world’s biggest publicly traded oil company may come close to matching or even beating that number next quarter, said Howard Silverblatt Standard & Poor’s Senior Index Analyst.