by Noreen Nielsen
Today, oil giant ExxonMobil announced their 2011 third-quarter earnings, reporting a whopping $10.3 billion in profits, an increase of 41 percent from the same period last year. Overall, Exxon has earned over $31 billion in profits in the first nine months of the year. Not surprisingly, ExxonMobil is also one of the most politically engaged of the top five oil companies. A few key facts:
- Exxon is the top oil and gas contributor in 2011, giving over $569,714 in campaign contributions already this year, with 91 percent of the contributions going to Republicans.
- Exxon has spent nearly $7 million on lobbying Congress this year
- Exxon pays a lower effective tax rate than the average American. In the years spanning 2008 to 2010, Exxon paid an effective rate of 17.6 percent, nearly 16 percent below the average individual federal tax rate.
- ExxonMobil spent $5.7 billion—more than half of its first-quarter profit—to buy 69 million shares of stock in order to “reduce shares outstanding.”
- In the second-quarter 2011, ExxonMobil spent $5.5 billion repurchasing its stock – more than half of its profits.
- ExxonMobil is sitting on $8 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 ranking in the top of the Fortune 500 list of company profits, ExxonMobil, along with other oil companies, continues to receive billions of dollars in tax breaks paid for by taxpayers.
- ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson ranked in as one of the highest paid CEOs in 2010, earning over $21 million in direct compensation.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
The only path to sustain this kind of growth and to keep dominating the energy market, requires a switch to renewable energy generation.
Fossil energies are no longer compatible with our consumption rate. To keep up the rate of growth you need to create a sustainable energy market.
Thanks, And …
Thanks, Noreen, for this great info.
May I raise some related points?
First, a couple or few years ago, I did a guest post for Climate Progress regarding ExxonMobil. It had loads of statistics, out-dated now but still reflective of the many “telling” types of statistics that we should be following, and aware of, when it comes to ExxonMobil. Can we link back to that older post? And, would it be possible for someone there, at CP, to do a comprehensive update of those statistics, many of which are highly revealing? (I’d do it but am presently trying to get a few other things done.)
Second, it would be super-great to do some revealing statistics for the overall U.S.-headquartered oil industry. In other words, take ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips together. And their key figures (regarding the following matters) up. What portion of their combined revenues, in total, comes from within the U.S. versus outside the U.S.? What about their proven reserves? How much (what proportion) outside the U.S. versus inside the U.S.? How about refinery capacity? How about total invested capital? How about pre-tax earnings? How about taxes paid? And, revealingly, how about the total employment of these three companies, added together? What has been the change from year-to-year over the last ten years, as profits have mainly risen? And what about R&D? These and other statistics are VERY revealing and are eye-openers relative to what most people think, or assume, and relative to what the companies often imply.
Third, we should be following what Rex Tillerson says about climate change, about a carbon tax, and so forth.
Also, who (what credible organization) is working on addressing and “combating” (peacefully speaking) the oil company problem and the oil companies themselves? Growing numbers of people are complaining about them, and we are always told of their earnings during earnings-announcement time, but who is actually DOING anything about them? Who is going deep and on the offensive? Who is trying to use real intellectual and activism “muscle” to actually face and address the oil folks?
We should begin to start talking about that, and we should begin to get smart and get organized.
Thanks for the great info.
Be Well,
Jeff
The link to “billions of dollars in tax breaks” first gave me a 404, and now it redirects back here. Not helpful.
$10.3 Billion this is just about the tab for the same period in Thailand.
Thailand is ‘other people’ or Hell as Sartre observed, and pre-eminently an ‘externality’. Floods only matter if the Masters are drowning, or their property being swept away.