The Chevron Refinery in Richmond, California. Isn’t winning nice? Photo: Ben Margot / AP (AP)
The ever-popular bulk polluters and the two largest US oil companies have had a terrific year so far.
Today ExxonMobil and Chevron released their earnings summaries for the first three months of 2022. And, surprisingly, while people in the US were paying some of the highest average prices ever at the pump, the oil giants were getting absolutely everything.
Exxon reported earnings of $5.48 billion between early January and late March, more than double the $2.73 billion it earned in the same period last year. This is after the company incurred a $3.4 billion “after-tax charge” (ie, a loss) from ceasing operations in Russia.
Chevron did even better, reporting total income of $6.26 billion for the first quarter of 2022, compared to $1.38 billion for the first quarter of 2021. That’s more than a 4.5x increase and that The company’s most profitable quarter in nearly a decade, as it reported net income of $7.2 billion at the end of 2012. “Human energy” indeed.
Neither company increased their overall production in the first half of 2022. Exxon’s production was down 4% from last quarter, and Chevron produced 40,000 barrels per day less oil between this quarter and last. Instead, the oil companies seem to simply benefit from the high barrel prices. (Note: Although Chevron produced less overall, the company’s domestic oil production increased by 10% and it intends to further increase the amount of oil it pumps from the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico to 1 million barrels per day. )
As a reminder, the current high gas prices are not due to production problems. The oil companies spent the 2010s actually overproducing and they suffered financially. Fossil fuels remained cheap and we remained dependent on them. Exxon and Chevron might try to argue that they’re making these new gains because they saved the day amid global conflicts, or that the Biden administration is to blame for high gas prices because they’ve curbed the industry. However, neither is true.
Well, gasoline should probably be expensive considering the actual cost of burning it in our engines is an environmental collapse. But until the US delivers on its promises to meaningfully improve and expand public transportation, most Americans will rely on cars to get around, and high gas prices hurt the already financially vulnerable the most. So the question is: should the companies most responsible for what UN Secretary-General António Guterres called a recent IPCC report, “the Atlas of Human Suffering,” be the ones to benefit from it?
Chevron, of course, helped jail an environmental attorney and last year spilled 600 gallons of oil from a Richmond, California refinery that was already one of the state’s biggest polluters. That’s nothing compared to the massive Exxon Valdez oil spill that is still wreaking havoc on people and the planet more than 30 years later. Exxon helped pay for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and instead of investing its sizeable 2022 profits in its own “low-carbon” goals, it’s opting instead to buy back shares and reward its shareholders.
I could go on listing things to consider in connection with these new earnings reports, but if I list too many, I may lose my chance of eventually being a Chevron editor.