Deer graze inside the gates of the Exxon Mobil Joliet refinery on the Des Plaines River. Exxon Mobil’s 2022 haul of $56 billion marked a historic high for the Western oil industry.
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The West’s five largest oil companies raked in combined profits of nearly $200 billion in 2022, intensifying calls for governments to impose tougher windfall taxes.
French oil giant TotalEnergies on Wednesday reported full-year profit of $36.2 billion, doubling last year’s total, as fossil fuel prices soared following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The results see TotalEnergies join supermajors Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP and Shell in recording a massive upswing in annual profits, after Exxon’s 2022 haul of $56 billion marked a historic high for the Western oil industry.
Altogether, the five Big Oil companies reported combined profits of $196.3 billion last year, more than the economic output of most countries.
Flush with cash, the energy giants have used their bumper earnings to reward shareholders with higher dividends and share buybacks.
Agnès Callamard, secretary general of human rights group Amnesty International, described Big Oil’s vast profits as “patently unjustifiable” and “an unmitigated disaster.”
“The billions of dollars of profits being made by these oil corporations must be adequately taxed so that governments can address effectively the rising cost of living for most vulnerable populations and better protect human rights in the face of multiple global crises,” Callamard said in a statement.
Activists from Greenpeace set up a mock-petrol station price board displaying the Shell’s net profit for 2022 as they demonstrate outside the company’s headquarters in London on Feb. 2, 2023.
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Big Oil executives have sought to defend their rising profits amid a barrage of criticism from campaigners — as well as outrage from the White House — typically highlighting the importance of energy security in the transition to renewables and suggesting higher taxes could deter investment.
“Ultimately, taxes are a matter for governments to decide on. We, of course, engage and provide perspectives and the key perspective that we try to provide is a context around the fact that companies like ourselves that need to invest multiple billion dollars to support the energy transition require a secure and stable investment climate,” Shell CEO Wael Sawan said Thursday.
His comments came shortly after Shell reported its highest-ever annual profit of nearly $40 billion, comfortably surpassing its previous record of $28.4 billion in 2008.
“For example, windfall taxes or price caps simply erode confidence in that investment stability and so I do worry about some of the moves being made,” Sawan said. “I think there is a different approach that needs to be had which is to really draw investment capital at a time when we need to be able to embed energy security into the broader energy system here in…
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