“It’s no surprise that after months of extreme price gouging, Chevron and Exxon raked in a whopping $73 billion in profits so far this year,” said Jordan Schreiber, director of energy and environment at Accountable.US. “But, instead of providing badly needed relief to consumers, they spent over $32 billion to enrich their wealthy shareholders while forcing American families to foot the bill.”
“Make no mistake,” Schreiber added, “Big Oil has launched an all-out war on American consumers this year, needlessly extracting every last dime out of working and middle-class people.”
“Shareholders have been the main beneficiaries of Exxon’s post-pandemic comeback,” the outlet noted. “At the beginning of the year, Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods reactivated share repurchases that had been on hold for more than half a decade. The $15 billion-a-year buyback program is about the same cash outlay as Exxon’s dividend, already the second-largest in the S&P 500 Index.”
In a column for the Boston Globe Wednesday, Owens observed that “executives are admitting to the strategy of keeping prices high because it means bigger profits for their companies and massive payouts to their shareholders.”
“The need for urgent action is undeniable—but you don’t have to take the word of watchdogs or critics,” Owens continued. “Corporations themselves are admitting to profiteering at the expense of American consumers. And one thing is clear: These companies won’t stop doing the ‘inflation dance,’ as one CEO called it, until we change their tune.”