The oil industry has begun reporting its huge profits from this past year. Exxon Mobil Corp announced on Tuesday that it had its highest-ever annual profit, pulling in $55.7 billion in 2022. Spiking the prices of gas during a pandemic, while blaming it on a make-believe bit of inflation, the “supply chain,” and a war with Russia, and you have yourself record profits. The reality over the past year was that even though oil prices dropped, gas prices remained high and only got higher until lawmakers and the president of the United States began threatening to maybe possibly do something. Don’t worry, they’re still far higher than when the pandemic started, and they ain’t going anywhere but up. Fossil fuels are misery and misery is what fossil fuel eats.
According to Reuters, this is a “historic high for the Western oil industry.” Yeehaw! I’m sure they are going to spend those big profits on updating infrastructure and creating more clean energy alternatives so that oil executives' grandchildren don’t have to live in a volcano fortified by sentient robo-apes? Nope. Chevron, which just announced its largest annual profit year of $36.5 billion, has also announced plans to begin a $75 billion stock buyback program that will start on April 1, 2023. Don’t worry, only you and I are the April fools here.
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As if anticipating the need for a truly pathetic excuse about how this isn’t sheer greed and profiteering for a big business model that hurts the majority of people in the world more than it helps, the Wall Street Journal pointed out that not everything was roses for Exxon Mobil and their almost $56 billion (that’s a letter “b”) windfall:
In the fourth quarter, Exxon made about $12.8 billion in profit, up from $8.9 billion in the same period the year before. The company’s fourth-quarter earnings-per-share came in below Wall Street’s expectations, at $3.09 a share, compared with an anticipated $3.28 a share, according to FactSet.
Exxon shares fell about 1% after earnings were announced Tuesday.
I wonder if those C-Suite executives will be able to fill the super-yacht pool this summer? No, not the super yacht pool on the upper deck, I’m talking about the third one they have on the second deck, next to the disco and the jacuzzi. It might be only one Maybach for their kid’s 16th birthday this year. Listen, we all have to make sacrifices, amiright? Here’s another fun thing that you won’t hear about from the QAnon crew, or the MAGA anti-COVID vaxxers:
In terms of profit, Irving, Texas-based Exxon in 2022 jumped ahead of JPMorgan Chase & Co., Johnson & Johnson and Verizon Communications Inc. among others. Its profit that year was also larger than the projected earnings of companies including Pfizer Inc., Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. Amazon made a record $33.4 billion in 2021 but is expected to post an annual loss.
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None of this is surprising as the fossil fuel industry gouged the world on price hikes they pretended had something to do with inflation and with supply chains. It didn’t. Costs for operations are never that high in the oil industry, comparatively speaking with other billion-dollar industries. In part, this is due to the unbelievable taxpayer money fossil fuel companies continue to receive through various subsidies in the form of “tax incentives.”
Can the government try and push for a “windfall tax?” They could. The European Union has, and Exxon says it still owes $1.3 billion of its fourth-quarter earnings to the EU. No worries, Exxon is suing the EU, as Exxon spokesperson Casey Norton told Reuters that windfall taxes “discourage investments.” Investments like a $75 billion stock buyback?
This is grand news for the maybe 100 million or so people scattered throughout the world that have an investment group or two investing their money in Exxon Mobil stock. Fun fact: There are just under 8 billion people on the earth, and most, if not all, of them are affected by the pollution and human-driven climate change that oil and gas companies produce. We are also the ones who shoulder the economic weight of skyrocketing gas prices driven by greed.
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