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"Big Oil’s Banner Year: Higher Prices, Record Profits, Less Oil"



by Daniel J. Weiss, Jackie Weidman, Rebecca Leber





Where the money goes


profits up production down table


Big Oil helps itself



profits vs. cash assets

Tax breaks, but not more jobs






The report also concluded that:






Big Oil woos Congress

Enough is enough














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5 Responses to Big Oil’s Banner Year: Higher Prices, Record Profits, Less Oil

  1. Leif says:

    Interesting business model. Buy government influence to grease the skids for you to legally exploit the commons and pollute the environment and sit back and watch the money grow as less product produced.

    Past time that “We the People” teach those parasites how to play nice with others. Corporations are “People” now I have heard tell. I have yet to see any evidence however…

  2. Bill Goedecke says:

    Even with higher prices, production can be constrained by the physical reality of field decline. So I am not so sure that general economic theory would indicate an increase in supply with increased price. The supply of tuna will not increase with higher prices. Scarcity promotes price inflation, especially in a captured market. The law of the market, as currently constructed, rewards companies when they invest in heavy oil. Shell and other companies maintain their reserve portfolio by these investments and investments in other questionable practices like shale gas and oil, I understand. Solar and wind do not fit in with the tremendous in-compnay infrastructure already constructed. The only way to create conditions in which the oil industry capital reserves would be available to the country would be to nationalize these companies (problematic, but national oil companies are more the norm world-wide). This cannot occur given our politics and sociology. Tax breaks are put in place to allow for ‘American made energy’. I hope we end them, but I hope that we begin to seriously consider how we can reduce our use of these tremendously useful liquid fuels, given our current infrastructure.

  3. Jim Pulliam says:

    What is the profit PERCENTAGE of these oil companies?

    Simply stating how much total profit there was does not tell a story – it’s just a big number.

    Revenue – cost = profit
    profit divided by revenue is gross profit percentage. Every other business I’ve ever heard of expresses profit as a percent but I NEVER see this about oil companies…

    What is the percentage?

  4. There are two stories here:

    1) GOOD: From a climate standpoint we want the oil companies to reduce production. Also buying back shares is a rational economic approach to a low-carbon future. I’d much rather they buy shares than expand carbon extraction. So two thumbs up for those two aspects.

    2) BAD: The rising price of oil is hammering the American and world economy. The benefits we get from oil are rapidly diminishing as the price goes up. Funding oil corp share buyback instead of paying our mortgages, expanding our biz and fueling the rest of our economy is hurting folks. The USA sends ever increasing billions of dollars out of the country every year to buy ever less oil.

  5. redrockraven says:

    The fact that world oil production has dropped is no surprise to anyone keeping track of known world oil reserves. Oil resource scientists have acknowledged that world oil production has peaked and is on a downward projection until these reserves are eventually depleted. Oil prices are erratic and will only get more so as word of dwindling world oil reserves circulates. It is no wonder that the largest oil companies are buying back their own stock as they want to capitalize on this depleting non-renewable resource.