After Windfall Profits, Chevron Set to Buy Back $75 Billion in Shares

Climate and consumer advocates reacted angrily Thursday to Chevron's announcement of a planned $75 billion stock buyback amid record profits and a worsening planetary emergency exacerbated by the continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels.

California-based Chevron said Wednesday it would start buying back shares on April 1, and that the new repurchase will be three times the size of the last one, which began in 2019. Bloomberg notes that the new buyback is equivalent to nearly a quarter of Chevron's market value.

"Companies like Chevron are doing absolutely massive stock buybacks after price gouging working families for over a year," tweeted Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D-181). "Then these same companies will come back hat-in-hand begging for more tax breaks and tax cuts."

Brian Vickers, a business administration professor at Northeastern State University in Oklahoma, tweeted, "I kept saying gas price increases were straight-up price gouging and not indicative of the price of oil, and here's all the proof I was right."

The Biden administration—which despite a worsening climate emergency has been pressing oil companies to increase production to keep gas prices down—denounced Chevron's planned buyback.

"For a company that claimed not too long ago that it was 'working hard' to increase oil production, handing out $75 billion to executives and wealthy shareholders sure is an odd way to show it," White House spokesperson Abdullah Hasan said in response to news of the buyback.

Thursday's announcement came as Chevron, BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies are set to announce a record $199 billion in collective 2022 profits, 50% higher than the previous record set over a decade ago, according to Bloomberg.

Chevron's $11.2 billion third-quarter profit last year was its second-highest on record and nearly double the $6.1 billion it reported during the same period in 2021.

Reacting to Chevron's impending buyback, biogeochemist and Earth sciences professor Gabriel Filippelli said "so much is wrong about this."

"Record profits for Chevron and the [Biden] administration is mad that they don't pump that into more drilling?" he asked. "They should pump it into more renewables and a real divestment strategy to stop producing their deadly product."

On Wednesday, U.S. Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) reintroduced the Fair and Transparent Gas Prices Act, which the lawmakers argue "would give the Federal Trade Commission the tools it needs to investigate unfair practices, provide market transparency, and prevent price gouging by Big Oil and gas companies."

Last March, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) introduced legislation that would tax excess oil company profits and use the proceeds to pay American households a quarterly rebate. That same month in the Senate Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced the Ending Corporate Greed Act, which would impose a 95% tax on the windfall profits of major companies.

President Joe Biden has threatened to back a windfall profits tax on Big Oil unless companies ramp up production, but has not yet done so.