As the public shells out for sky-high gas prices at the pump, major oil and gas company executives have been raking in cash as their company stocks soar, a new report finds.
Food and Water Watch has found that company stocks held by CEOs of eight large fossil fuel companies have increased in value by nearly $100 million just between January and mid-March — right around when gas prices skyrocketed as Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine.
CEOs of ExxonMobil and Cheniere have seen the largest gains, with the stocks of Cheniere’s Jack Fusco and Exxon’s Darren Woods increasing in value by $25 million. Steven Kean, CEO of major Texas-based oil and gas company Kinder Morgan, has seen his company stocks jump by almost $15 million.
Republicans have blamed Joe Biden for high gas prices, but there’s virtually nothing that Biden can do to affect gas prices. In reality, experts say that gas prices are largely due to oil and gas companies’ market manipulation, which is motivated by a desire to please shareholders. In the past weeks, gas prices have stayed high even as crude oil prices have dropped — thanks in part to Wall Street investors’ pressure to keep stock prices high.
As gas prices rose steadily last year, and large fossil fuel company stocks outperformed the stock market, oil and gas companies essentially admitted that they’re currently trying to win over shareholders. “We are working hard to win back investors,” Chevron’s chief financial officer Pierre Breber told the Financial Times in February. “This is a sector that has underperformed for 10 years, for five years, for three years.”
Indeed, oil and gas company stocks have risen precipitously over the past year, and have been making tens of billions of dollars in profits in a major upswing from 2020’s losses; in just the first nine months of 2021, top oil and gas companies made $174 billion in profits.
Oil and gas CEOs have been cashing in on these gains, Food and Water Watch found. ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance cashed out $23 million of stocks in February, while Chevron CEO Michael Wirth sold $14 million later that month.
Meanwhile, top companies have announced stock buyback programs totalling over $25 billion in the past year — enough money to heat over 33 million people’s homes over the winter, based on the projected average gas bill of about $750.
Lawmakers have proposed legislation to tax profits made by Big Oil as it exploits the crisis. Earlier this month, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon) introduced a bill that would levy a tax on 2022 income that exceeds pre-pandemic profits; the legislation would then redistribute the revenue gained from that tax back to consumers.
This is an incredibly popular idea. Polling from last week found that 87 percent of voters think that lawmakers should take action against profiteering oil and gas companies, while 80 percent agree that a windfall tax on Big Oil would be beneficial to prevent companies from price gouging.
Food and Water Watch pointed out in its report that fossil fuel companies are also aggressively trying to lock in their dominance in the energy industry in response to the invasion of Ukraine. As Russia first launched its attacks, Fusco told investors that the company is going to be “opportunistic” in pursuing increases to drilling.
“This campaign to promote [liquid natural gas] in response to Ukraine is a cynical calculation by the dominant players in the industry,” the report reads. “They intend it to lock in long-term contracts that would create decades of additional fossil fuel dependence.”
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.