A dozen years ago, ExxonMobil was the bluest of blue-chip companies. Raking in record-breaking profit, it spent every quarter of 2008 as the world’s most valuable publicly traded company. Not anymore. The oil giant’s market value today is a third of what it was in 2008, when it was worth over $500 billion. That slide culminated last month with Exxon ending its 92-year run on the Dow Jones industrial average. The removal of the longest-serving component of the U.S. stock indicator — Exxon joined in 1928 , when it was known as Standard Oil of New Jersey — is just the latest sign of the decline of oil as major driver of the U.S. and global economies. Pummeled by the coronavirus pandemic, which has stopped travel in its tracks and sent oil prices to historic lows , the energy sector became the smallest component of the S&P 500-stock index […]