The Financial Post reports in its Tuesday edition that Exxon Mobil and Chevron are generating returns not seen since their heyday more than a decade ago, with $58.7-billion (U.S.) handed to shareholders last year and more to come in 2024, even if crude prices drop. A Bloomberg dispatch to the Post report that the two companies, however, are struggling to compete in a stock market beholden to Silicon Valley. Chevron hit record production in 2023 while buying back 5 per cent of its stock and forecasts oil and gas growth of as much as 7 per cent this year, led by low-cost barrels from the Permian basin. It was rewarded with a 3-per-cent bump in its shares on Feb. 2, slightly better than Shell's gain a day earlier. Exxon, which is gushing cash from the fast-growing oil discovery in Guyana, fell 0.4 per cent. Their stellar operational performance was no enough to prevent them slipping further behind tech giants Meta and Amazon, which surged 20 per cent and 8 per cent. Meta, which already trades twice the price-to-earnings ratio of the oil giants, added $197-billion (U.S.) to its market value as it lifted buybacks and introduced a dividend. The owner of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp is now three times the size of Exxon.