by Noreen Nielsen
This morning, ConocoPhillips announced their 2011 third-quarter earnings, reporting profits of $2.62 billion — a 14 percent drop due to production losses in China and Libya — bringing their total profits in 2011 to $9 billion. Below is a quick look at some other facts about ConocoPhillips:
- ConocoPhillips has spent over $10.5 million lobbying Congress in 2011, ranking in as the sixth largest spender this year – and number one in the oil and gas industry.
- ConocoPhillips has contributed $94,953 to federal campaigns in 2011, with 84 percent of the contributions going to Republicans.
- Conoco Phillips devoted $1.6 billion of its $3 billion 2011 first-quarter earnings to stock buybacks—more than 50 percent of its profit.
- In the second quarter 2011, ConocoPhilips spent over 90 percent of its $3.4 billion profit on stock buy backs — $3.1 billion.
- ConocoPhillips is sitting on $6 billion in cash on hand. Added together, the Big Five oil companies — BP, Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Shell — are sitting on cash resources of $59 billion and made nearly $1 trillion in profits over the past decade.
- Despite this, ConocoPhillips and its other Big Oil allies continue to aggressively lobby Congress to maintain their billions of dollars in oil industry tax breaks.
- ConocoPhillips’ Chairman and CEO James Mulva received a 25-percent hike in compensation last year, earning him a total compensation of $17.9 million.
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Conspicuous by its absence is the amount of this cash that was invested in new start up businesses…you know, the ones that hire the unemployed. Or the funding and construction of solar farms…they are energy companies and it doesn’t have to all come from the dinosaur age.
Thanks for this info, Noreen.
I’ve never analyzed ConocoPhillips, but I’ve analyzed ExxonMobil before.
Some very interesting statistics include how much of their business is overseas vs. domestic: the proportion of total capital employed, refinery capacity, revenues, earnings, reserves, and so forth. At least in ExxonMobil’s case, such stats show that they are much more an international company than a U.S. company. In other words, many folks tend to think that these companies are good ole’ American “patriotic” companies that actually care about the U.S. in any healthy way — ha! ha! — so it helps to see that most of their business by nearly any measure is outside the U.S. For example, in the case of ExxonMobil, last I checked, between two-thirds and 75% of their investment, assets, and business by any measure was outside the U.S.
It would be very, very interesting to take the big three “U.S.” oil companies — ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips — and add their key stats together according to each measure, to see how much of the big three’s investment activity, operations, revenues, and earnings are inside the U.S. and how much of them are outside the U.S.
Also, R&D is another key stat. What portion of revenues, and what portion of earnings, is total R&D? Of course, the vast majority of their R&D will be on conventional oil and gas stuff — no real help to climate change — and only a very small portion (probably unreported) will have any real relationship to solar, wind, geothermal, and etc.
Be Well,
Jeff