NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) - Get Report are lower by 1.98% to $84.37 in late afternoon trading on Thursday, as the plummeting price of oil drives some stocks within the energy sector into the red today.

Crude oil (WTI) is slipping by 2.13% to $43.71 per barrel and Brent crude is retreating by 2.72% to $54.39 per barrel this afternoon, according to the CNBC.com index.

Oil is down today on a stronger dollar, record supply levels, and comments out of Kuwait regarding OPEC's production rate.

With the rise in the dollar, demand for commodities dominated by the currency weakens. The greenback is up 1.45% this afternoon, according to the Wall Street Journal dollar index.

Data from the Energy Information Administration showed U.S. oil inventories grew more than expected last week by 9.6 million barrels to 458.5 million barrels.

Oil is also being pressured by comments from Kuwait Oil Minister Ali-Al-Omair who said OPEC still has no plans to put together a meeting in order to discuss ways to shore up oil prices and has no choice but to keep its current production rate in order to maintain market share, Bloomberg reports.

Separately, TheStreet Ratings team rates EXXON MOBIL CORP as a Hold with a ratings score of C+. TheStreet Ratings Team has this to say about their recommendation:

"We rate EXXON MOBIL CORP (XOM) a HOLD. The primary factors that have impacted our rating are mixed-some indicating strength, some showing weaknesses, with little evidence to justify the expectation of either a positive or negative performance for this stock relative to most other stocks. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its reasonable valuation levels and largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures. However, as a counter to these strengths, we also find weaknesses including weak operating cash flow, poor profit margins and disappointing return on equity."

Highlights from the analysis by TheStreet Ratings Team goes as follows:

• XOM's debt-to-equity ratio is very low at 0.17 and is currently below that of the industry average, implying that there has been very successful management of debt levels. Despite the fact that XOM's debt-to-equity ratio is low, the quick ratio, which is currently 0.51, displays a potential problem in covering short-term cash needs.
• XOM, with its decline in revenue, slightly underperformed the industry average of 19.6%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues fell by 22.6%. Weakness in the company's revenue seems to have hurt the bottom line, decreasing earnings per share.
• The gross profit margin for EXXON MOBIL CORP is rather low; currently it is at 17.91%. It has decreased from the same quarter the previous year. Regardless of the weak results of the gross profit margin, the net profit margin of 8.63% is above that of the industry average.
• Net operating cash flow has decreased to $7,415.00 million or 27.36% when compared to the same quarter last year. In addition, when comparing the cash generation rate to the industry average, the firm's growth is significantly lower.
• You can view the full analysis from the report here: XOM Ratings Report