The fact that these absurd profits are at a company which makes its money selling a substance that when burned has the effect of creating global climate change is problematic to me. I understand that it is not the company's fault (far from it in fact) that burning oil causes pollution, but any company with such insanely large profit margins should do something for the betterment of mankind.
It makes sense to me that a percentage of such outrageous profits made by oil companies should be invested in renewable energy and technology that reduces carbon emissions in addition to other initiatives that would reduce man's footprint on the earth. Furthermore it would wean the US off of foreign oil, while simultaneously addressing the problem of global warming. I would argue that any taxes charged to oil companies because they have such insane profit margins should be used to reduce carbon emissions and make the United States more environmentally friendly in general. In this case a tax makes more sense because oil companies tend to not have an incentive to invest in renewable resources (although it would make sense to get a market in the renewable energy market since over time it is bound to eat into the oil companies' market share - why not pick the market up yourself, if you're going to lose another one).
Perhaps airlines could even get into the game and do more to reduce emissions (even though I'd argue airplane's emissions are small, and why not reduce the very dirty industries first), like Virgin Atlantic has when it looked into tugging airplanes to the runway and starting engines there.