As gas prices shot up in 2021, CEOs of major oil and gas corporations raked in millions, a new analysis reveals.
Compensation for Big Oil chief executives rose by nearly $45 million in 2021 over 2020 levels, a new analysis by Accountable.US shows, as first reported by the Guardian. In total, 28 large oil and gas corporations like Exxon and Shell gave $394 million to their CEOs last year.
CEOs like Marathon Petroleum’s Michael Hennigan and Exxon’s Darren Woods were exceptionally highly compensated, being paid over $20 million each while getting bonuses of $5 million and $7 million, respectively. Woods’s pay bump alone was 50 percent of his previous pay. Tracy Krohn, the CEO of W&T Offshore, an oil and fracked gas producer, made $4 million more last year — nearly three times his 2020 compensation.
On average, each CEO made $1.6 million more last year than they did in 2020. The bonuses for 14 CEOs alone totaled $31.8 million.
“While the wealthy CEOs further line their pockets, Americans are left to foot the bill as they are forced to make sacrifices to cover the high prices at the pump,” the report reads.
This massive raise came during a year that saw enormous spikes in gas prices, which corporations blamed on inflation. The average price per gallon for all grades of gas in 2021 was $3.10, according to the Energy Information Administration, far higher than the pre-pandemic average price of $2.69.
However, the new data suggests that high gas prices weren’t caused solely by inflation, but also by companies seeking to pump profits and executive salaries.
“Americans will not soon forget that when they were struggling to fill their tanks, oil and gas companies made billions in record profits and decided to give that money to wealthy industry executives and shareholders rather than help consumers by stabilizing gas prices,” said Accountable.US President Kyle Herrig in a statement.
“It’s time for Big Oil to stop lying about the Biden administration’s energy policies and quit using inflation and the crisis in Ukraine to cash in and line their pockets at our expense,” Herrig continued.
While conservatives and the oil and gas industry took advantage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to call for an increase in drilling, experts say that there’s little that increasing drilling could do to affect prices currently, and that such measures would be detrimental to the climate. Instead, gas prices have stayed high over the past months because the industry is paying out shareholders in spades, and Wall Street investors don’t want the high profits to stop.
The profits have indeed been high. Last month, Accountable.US found that 25 top oil and gas companies made a whopping $205 billion in profits last year as consumers struggled at the pump, with some families having to cut down on trips to run errands to save money. Executives at companies like Chevron and Shell said that 2021 was a banner year in terms of profits, and praised the high prices as a good thing for the companies.
“By the end of 2021, we had one of our most successful years ever with return on capital employed approaching 10 percent, our highest since 2014,” Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said in an earnings call earlier this year.
In response to what progressives are saying is corporate price gouging, lawmakers have introduced windfall profits bills to capture the high profits that oil and gas companies are currently raking in to discourage them from inflating prices; Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) went a step further and introduced a bill that would capture 95 percent of windfall profits from not only the oil and gas industry but also corporations across sectors, like Amazon and Blackstone.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.