Record quarterly profits were reported Friday by ExxonMobil and Chevron, both of which have been under fire from the White House over skyrocketing gas prices.
During the second quarter, ExxonMobil made $17.9 billion in earnings and Chevron $11.6 billion, thanks to rising oil prices and restricted processing capacity, which pushed refinery margins up.
The results follow those of European petroleum titans Shell ($18 billion), TotalEnergies ($5.7 billion), and Eni ($3.8 billion), all of which reported similarly staggering earnings.
“Our emphasis on the fundamentals and the investments we put in motion several years ago and continued through the depths of the pandemic,” said ExxonMobil Chief Executive Darren Woods.
As CEO Mike Wirth put it: “growing energy supplies to assist meet the difficulties facing global markets,”
Despite the recent decline in petrol prices, advocacy group Public Citizens has expressed concern that “corporate greed is choking the working class” in a tweet.
Senator Bernie Sanders, a Democrat from Vermont, has advocated for a tax on unearned income.
Exxon Mobil and Chevron both announced plans to spend up to $47 billion on stock buybacks after spending $18.8 billion on them so far this year, although consumers were feeling the pinch.
There have been a lot of buybacks in the oil industry in the last three months.
In the first three months of the year, crude oil prices fluctuated between $95 and $120 a barrel, as war and Russian sanctions pushed the market back to levels last seen in 2008.
Consequently, the rise in US gasoline prices, which reached an all-time high in mid-June, pinched American families and put pressure on President Joe Biden, who has had a tense relationship with ExxonMobil and Chevron, as well as the oil industry more widely.
As Biden noted in June, “Exxon made more money than God this year,” he blasted the business for spending extra cash on share buybacks rather than considerably increasing capital expenditures.
Oil and natural gas volumes in the United States rose on Friday, with ExxonMobil reporting a gain of 130,000 barrels of oil-equivalent in the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico, and Chevron reporting a 3% increase on the country’s total output of oil and natural gas.
Beaumont, Texas-based ExxonMobil aims to add 250,000 barrels per day of refining capacity in the first quarter of 2023, making it “the industry’s greatest single capacity addition in the United States since 2012,” Woods said in a company statement.
ExxonMobil’s sales jumped 71% to $115.7 billion, while Chevron’s jumped 83% to $69 billion in revenue.
However, despite the fact that oil consumption collapsed early in the Covid-19 pandemic and the two firms incurred large financial losses, the mountains of cash generated by higher prices have not been used to boost capital spending, which is still below levels seen before the pandemic.
As a result, the corporations have instead funneled funds to shareholders. Distributions from ExxonMobil were $7.6 billion, while Chevron increased its annual share repurchase limit from $10 billion to $15 billion.
In noon trade, ExxonMobil shares rose 4.1% to $96.39, while Chevron shares rose 8.5% to $163.19.