Windfall Profits for ExxonMobil and Chevron While Consumers Pay the Price at the Pump

This morning, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp, announced their quarterly profits. At a moment when consumers face historically high prices at the pump, Exxon doubled its profits to $5.5 billion. Chevron quadrupled its profits to $6.3 billion as compared to the same quarter in 2021.

In early April, Public Citizen, Friends of the Earth, and BailoutWatch reported that oil and gas companies have authorized spending a combined $45 billion for purchasing and retiring their own stock, directly enriching insiders and other shareholders.

In response to the windfall profits, Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, issued the following statement:

"With prices rising at the pump, Exxon, Chevron and Big Oil profits are soaring so high they don't know what to do with all the money, so they are going to waste it on stock buybacks.

"Consumers should not get punched in the face so that Big Oil can stuff its overflowing coffers.

"There's no secret as to why their profits are soaring: Big Oil has fixed costs of production while the market price of oil is skyrocketing, thanks to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and other reasons. This is a classic situation of windfall profits.

"There's a straightforward solution to windfall profits: a windfall profits tax. Congress should act immediately to adopt a windfall profits tax, as proposed by Sens. Whitehouse, Sanders and others, with the tax revenues returned directly to consumers. This shouldn't be controversial and it shouldn't be delayed.

"There are a lot of other things that Congress can do related to Big Oil price gouging and manipulation of energy commodity markets, and Congress should -- but these would not be as impactful or immediate as a windfall profits tax."