Yesterday, Exxon Mobil revealed that it made $56 billion in profits in 2022 — its most profitable year ever.
A few days before that, Chevron announced that it made $35.5 billion in profits last year — more than doubling its profits from 2021.
- Again, we’re talking about sheer profits.
- That’s billions and billions and billions — from our pockets to their already overflowing corporate coffers — *beyond* what these companies spent on things like offshore rigs, drilling equipment, pipelines, tankers, salaries, CEO bonuses, and junk science sowing unfounded doubt about their own complicity in climate change.
- Not to mention government bribes slash campaign contributions (the exact phrase depending on the country and, perhaps, one’s tolerance for semantic distinctions).
- And of course it’s not just the cost of filling your car’s gas tank or heating your home.
- The price of oil is one of the main drivers of the runaway inflation — i.e. further corporate price gouging — that has distorted the economy here in America and around the world.
- Meanwhile, by keeping us addicted to their dirty energy products, companies like these are literally melting the planet we live on.
Why do we let these companies price gouge us to such an obscene degree? How much profit is enough, especially considering that the main thing the oil behemoths are doing with these windfall profits nowadays is buying back their own stock?
Public Citizen is urging President Joe Biden — in his upcoming State of the Union Address — to call out Big Oil’s obscene profits and to call on Congress to pass a windfall profits tax on Big Oil that would give money back to American consumers.
Tell President Biden:
Big Oil’s record-shattering profits are both obscene on their face and destructive economically. We urge you to call out Big Oil’s price gouging and to call on Congress to pass a windfall profits tax on Big Oil in your upcoming State of the Union Address.
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For progress,
- Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen
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