These Top 5 Oil Companies Just Raked In $35 Billion While Americans Pay More at the Pump
Since Russia’s unjustified invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which disrupted the global supply of fossil fuels and caused oil and gas shortages worldwide, oil and gas giants have quietly enjoyed unprecedented record profits. While people across the United States have seen gas prices as high as $6 per gallon—stretching budgets thin and driving worsening inflation—the oil majors have been absolutely raking in money, lining CEOs’ and shareholders’ pockets with profits.
It is hard to overstate how profitable the war in Ukraine and the resulting financial pain have been for oil executives. Companies already benefited from inflated gas prices in 2021 as the economy bounced back from the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns—in fact, the top 25 companies made more than $205 billion in profits in 2021—but the recently announced first-quarter profits for 2022 are even more astounding.
The top five oil companies alone—Shell, ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips—brought in more than 300 percent more in profits than in the first quarter of 2021. That is a total of more than $35 billion in profits in just three months. In fact, these five companies’ first-quarter profits alone are equivalent to almost 28 percent of what Americans spent to fill up their gas tanks in the same time period.
Gas prices are too high for families on tight budgets, but Congress can take action now—including directing the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate price gouging, adopting a “use-it-or-lose-it” policy for drilling on public lands, and implementing a windfall profits tax—to help tackle high prices while reducing the United States’ reliance on volatile fossil energy markets and addressing ever-worsening climate change.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/these-top-5-oil-companies-just-raked-in-35-billion-while-americans-pay-more-at-the-pump/
Time for accountability.
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