Exxon, Chevron, Shell Post Record Profits As Americans Pay for Higher Gas Prices and More Expensive Climate Disasters

The Oil Giants Will Reportedly Use Record Profits to Enrich Executives and Shareholders

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Oil and gas giant ExxonMobil today announced a second quarter profit of $17.9 billion — its largest ever — which the company will reportedly use to “buy back up to $30 billion of its shares” over the next two years. Shell and Chevron also announced record quarterly profits of $11.5 billion and $11.6 billion, respectively.

Exxon’s $17.9 billion in profits announced today, for just three months in 2022, are worth more than all the combined “greenhouse gas emission-reduction projects” the company has pledged for the next six years. 

Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, released the following statement: 

“Big Oil companies are making a killing and pouring fuel on the climate fire while communities pay for more and deadlier climate disasters. It’s outrageous. 

“Exxon and other oil and gas corporations lobbied and lied for decades to keep the world addicted to fossil fuels, making billions while hardworking families pay for higher gas prices and costlier heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, and floods. Now Exxon is once again using its record profits to line the pockets of executives and shareholders. 

“Elected officials cannot remain silent in the face of this injustice. Whether it’s taxing these companies’ record profits, or taking them to court to make polluters pay for climate damages they knowingly caused, it’s time to stand up to Big Oil.” 

Background on Big Oil’s climate deception, the resulting costs, and legal efforts to hold the company accountable: 

Since an internal 1979 Exxon study confirmed the link between fossil fuels and climate change and warned of “dramatic world change,” the U.S. has sustained 332 weather and climate disasters where overall damages reached or exceeded $1 billion — totaling $2.275 trillion in overall costs. 

Exxon lobbied against President Biden’s climate agenda, and last year, Exxon lobbyist Keith McCoy said the company has worked behind-the-scenes to attack climate science and block U.S. climate action. “We were looking out for our investments,” he said. 

Months later, executives from Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP America refused, while under oath during a congressional hearing, to pledge that they would stop spending money to oppose efforts to reduce emissions and combat climate change. The companies now face subpoenas from the House Oversight Committee about their role in spreading climate disinformation. 

Since 2017, 20 city and county governments in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, South Carolina, and Washington, as well as the attorneys general of Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Vermont, and the District of Columbia, have filed lawsuits to hold ExxonMobil and other major oil and gas companies accountable for deceiving the public about their products’ role in climate change. 

The cases seek to make the companies pay a range of steep damages for its deception — from covering costs of local climate adaptation to paying punitive penalties or disgorging profits made through deceptive practices. 

Exxon will soon have to face trial for consumer fraud in Massachusetts, and Exxon, Chevron, Shell and others will soon have to face trial for climate deception and damages in Honolulu, thanks to recent court rulings.