The top two corporations on the Fortune 500 Global ranking, Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil, announced their 2012 second-quarter earnings today, bringing the total profits for three Big Oil companies to $44 billion for 2012 or $250 million every day this year. Exxon profited by $16 billion this quarter, bringing its earnings for 2012 to $25 billion.

The New York Times wrote that Exxon and Shell’s earnings “disappoint,” because energy prices unexpectedly dropped for consumers this summer. Put their profits in the appropriate context, however, and Exxon and Shell still made a combined $160,000 per minute last quarter, even though the top five oil companies benefit from $2.4 billion federal tax breaks every year.

Below we look at what Exxon and Shell spends its earnings on:

ExxonMobil:

– Exxon spent 42 percent — or $10.7 billion — of its 2012 profits buying back its stock, which enriches executives and largest shareholders.

– Exxon has spent $17 million lobbying for the past 18 months, making it the top spender in the oil and gas industry. It has spent more than $52 million lobbying for the first three years of the Obama presidency, 50 percent more than in the Bush administration.

– Exxon is sitting on $18 billion in cash reserves.

– Exxon send federal candidates $1.3 million in campaign contributions so far this campaign cycle, sending 91 percent to Republicans.

– Exxon paid just 13 percent in federal taxes last year, lower than the average American family. Right after Mitt Romney, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is the top recipient of Exxon federal contributions.

– Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson received $24.7 million total compensation.

Royal Dutch Shell:

– Shell will start drilling in the Arctic this summer, but its oil spill response plan is still behind schedule. It’s off to an inauspicious start in the Arctic, recently losing control of an Arctic drilling rig.

– Shell has spent nearly $22 million for the past 18 months, making it the second-biggest spender of the oil and gas industry.

– Shell has more than $17.3 billion in cash reserves.

– Shell bought back 15 percent of its second-quarter profits, or $900 million.

– Shell CEO Peter Voser’s compensation more than doubled in 2011 to $15.3 million. His salary increased (in euros) by 113 percent.

– In its annual report, Shell noted that the number of oil spills increased from 195 in 2010 to 207 during 2011.

While these companies already benefit from billions in tax breaks, Mitt Romney has offered the industry even more. A Center for American Progress Action analysis finds that Romney’s tax plan could lower five companies’ annual tax bill by another $2.3 billion, virtually doubling what they already receive in tax breaks.

Chevron and BP are the last two of the Big Oil companies to announce profits.

The Big Five oil companies – BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell – are slated to announce their 2012 second-quarter profits later this week.

We can expect these companies, all of which rank in the top 10 of the “Fortune 500 Global Ranking,” to reveal billions of dollars more in profits, after earning $375 million in profits per day in 2011 ($261,000 per minute), and $368 million per day in the first three-months of 2012 — bringing their combined profits to $1 trillion from 2001 through 2011.

Below is a quick look at just how much these Big Oil companies are making, and where they are spending their billions in profits.

Big Oil’s Big Profits, In 24 Hours

• The five biggest oil companies earned a combined profit of $375 million per day, or a record $137 billion profit for the year, in 2011, despite reducing their oil production.

• In 60 seconds, these five companies earned $261,000 — more than 96 percent of American households make in one year.

• These five oil companies received $6.6 million in federal tax breaks every day.

• In 2011, the three largest domestic public oil companies spent $100 million of their profits each day, or over 50 percent, buying back their own stock to enrich their board, senior managers, and largest share holders.

• The entire oil and gas industry spent on average $400,000 each day lobbying senators and representatives to weaken public health safeguards and keep big oil tax breaks, totaling nearly $150 million.

• Each CEO of the Big Five companies received an average of $60,110 in compensation per day last year. On average, their pay jumped 55 percent in 2011. Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson’s compensation came close to $100,000 per day last year.

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Fueled by a warming climate, Colorado is experiencing its worst fire season in its history.

As researchers at Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) joined 32,000 other Coloradans in fleeing the fires, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson spoke to the Council on Foreign Relations about the “manageable” risks of climate change:

Rex Tillerson said at a meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York that climate change was a “great challenge,” but it could be solved by adapting to risks such as higher sea levels and changing conditions for agriculture.

“As a species that’s why we’re all still here: we have spent our entire existence adapting. So we will adapt to this,” he said. “It’s an engineering problem, and it has engineering solutions.”

Tillerson’s flippant remarks about “adapting” to the “manageable” consequences of climate change come at a time that Exxon is making record profits. In 2011, the company made $41.1 billion in profits, and Tillerson pulled in $34.9 million total compensation — a 20 percent raise from 2010.

A 2011 study found that “9 out of 10 top climate change deniers [were] linked with Exxon Mobil.” So it’s no surprise that Exxon’s CEO would spread misinformation on global warming.

Climate Progress is unaware of any serious climate scientists who think that global warming is “manageable” simply through adaptation if we listen to the do-nothing Exxon crowd and stay anywhere near our current emissions path. We know a great many who have written that the reverse is true (see below).

It’s also worth nothing that by mid-century, wildfires in the West  our projected to be far, far worse. Here’s the grim projection from a presentation made by the President’s science adviser Dr. John Holdren in Oslo in 2010:

We can barely manage the wildfires we have today. How exactly would much of the West “manage” a 4-fold to 6-fold increase in wildfires? And that’s just from a 1°C increase in temperatures. We could see 5 times that this century.

Tillerson pushed standard denialist obfuscation talking points:

He added: “In the IPCC reports … when you predict things like sea-level rise, you get numbers all over the map. If you take what I would call a reasonable scientific approach to that, we believe those consequences are manageable. They do require us to begin to spend more policy effort on adaptation.”

While it’s true that the IPCC and other analyses have reported a range of sea level rise and other impacts, much of that is due to the fact that they consider some very low emissions scenarios that would require aggressive action of a kind that Exxon has spent millions to stop. And the IPCC report was based on science and observations that is 6 years old — it ignored virtually any contribution to sea level rise this century from the disintegration of the great ice sheets. Now there is a widespread convergence of scientific analysis that says on the do-nothing path, sea level rise by 2100 is likely to be 3 feet and could be double that.

The key point is that the Exxon strategy – taking no serious action to reduce emissions —  eliminates most of the uncertainty concerning future emissions and makes catastrophic impacts all but a sure thing.

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By Jessica Goad

As the New York Times reported last month, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing corporate front group, has been behind various efforts to enact watered down state regulations for the natural gas drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

The Times noted that ALEC’s model legislation being shopped to state legislators was sponsored by Exxon Mobil. And now, new documents show how Exxon’s donations to ALEC match up with the timing of the development of fracking legislation.

According to Exxon’s 2011 corporate giving report, ALEC was listed as the recipient of $86,500:

American Legislative Exchange Council, Washington, D.C.

-  General Support:  74,000

-  ALEC States and Nation Policy Summit:  12,500

The “ALEC States and Nation Policy Summit,” to which Exxon gave $12,500, took place in Scottsdale, Arizona, in December 2011.  And according to both the Times and an ALEC blog, the hydraulic fracturing disclosure language was approved by the organization as a model bill in December 2011.

At issue is whether natural gas companies should be required to inform the public about the type of chemicals being pumped underground to facilitate the extraction of gas. Some of those chemicals are known or suspected carcinogens.  At first glance Exxon and ALEC’s sponsorship of fracking disclosure laws seems commendable; however, a closer glance reveals that the legislation actually contains serious loopholes for companies wanting to protect “trade secrets.”

Ohio is “in the final stages” of enacting regulations address hydraulic fracturing chemical disclosure. But as Connor Gibson at Nation of Change notes:

At least 33 of the 45 Ohio legislators who co-sponsored SB 315 are ALEC members, and language from portions of the state Senate bill is similar to ALEC’s “Disclosure of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Composition Act.”

Exxon is the largest producer of natural gas in the country, a position solidified after its purchase of natural gas company XTO in 2010.

by Jane Dale Owen

Although few people will even know about it, one of the most powerful corporations in the world is meeting in Dallas today.

How shareholders vote on resolutions in that meeting is critical to public health and the environment. The corporation is Exxon Mobil — the largest, most profitable energy corporation in the world. The shareholder resolutions call for more information about the effects of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking; company goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions; and creating a climate future task force.

I am a shareholder in Exxon Mobil, and I have deep roots in the oil business. My grandfather, Robert Lee Blaffer, was one of the founders of Humble Oil Company, the parent company of Exxon Mobil. My grandfather was a humanitarian and fiscally responsible. At that time he was unaware of the side effects of oil extraction and the refining process. I believe he would want me to do what I can as a shareholder to influence this powerful company to move toward a more sustainable future.

Being a shareholder in an extremely profitable energy company comes with financial benefits, and it comes with responsibility. Shareholders have the right to vote, speak and influence the company from the inside. It is up to us to hold Exxon Mobil accountable for the way it does business. In this season of annual shareholders meetings, we are seeing that shareholders do have power. To use that power we must stay involved. We are more powerful as shareholders than any unnoticed vote we could make by selling our shares.

Do we really want our company to be making deals with Russia to teach them the fracking process? Or to give them a stake in the Gulf of Mexico and West Texas in exchange for oil exploration rights in the Russian Black Sea and Kara Sea? Do we want Exxon Mobil to inflict the environmental damage associated with extracting oil from the tar sands in Canada? Do we want our refineries to continue to endanger the lives of children and families living near them?

Under the banner of energy independence, Exxon Mobil is throwing caution to the wind and moving full speed ahead into fracking, off-shore drilling and in other environmentally sensitive areas. A better long-term plan for energy independence would be to steer away from fossil fuels and move toward limitless solar, wind and geothermal.

If Exxon Mobil put resources into solving public health and environmental threats, they could be positioned to innovate and compete in the fast-changing, resource-constrained global economy. This powerful company could be a leader in doing what is needed now to turn a climate catastrophe around.

As shareholders of Exxon Mobil, we are part of a company that has unprecedented influence all over the world. We must exercise our power as shareholders and insist that our company become a better corporate citizen and use its power for a life-sustaining future.

Jane Dale Owen is granddaughter of Robert Lee Blaffer, one of the founders of Humble Oil and Refining Company, the parent company of Exxon Mobil. She is president and founder of Citizens League for Environmental Action Now (CLEAN) www.cleanhouston.org, an organization that for more than a decade has been working to inform and educate the public about solutions to environmental issues.

Related Post:

• Exxon Makes $104 Million In Profit Per Day So Far In 2012, While Americans Are Stuck With A Higher Gas Bill

by Jason Tanz, via OnEarth Magazine

Perhaps you recall Milo Minderbinder, the ambitious World War II mess hall officer from Catch-22. An avatar of capitalist ambition, Minderbinder expands his modest operation into a full-fledged multinational corporation.

It starts innocently enough — Minderbinder starts buying eggs from Sicily, then arranges a series of increasingly ludicrous deals to turn a profit. The absurd logic of untrammeled capitalism soon drives him to outrageous action, including accepting money from the Germans to bomb his own platoon. He justifies his behavior by pointing out that, as everyone in the troop is an investor — “everybody has a share,” as his catchphrase has it — they are in fact profiting from their own demise.

In Steve Coll’s new book Private Empire, a history of ExxonMobil in the years since the March 24, 1989, Valdez spill in Alaska, CEO Lee Raymond doesn’t quite reach Minderbinderian levels of amorality, but he gets mighty close. His company pays the torture-happy Singaporean military to protect its oil fields from rebel forces. He hires a team of scientists to browbeat researchers attempting to assess the damage from Valdez. He publicly dismisses the very notion of climate change, even as his company explores how global warming might offer new opportunities for oil exploration and profit. “Don’t believe for a minute that ExxonMobil doesn’t think climate change is real,” Coll quotes a manager as saying.

Coll conducted hundreds of interviews to compile this exhaustive — sometimes exhausting — history of one of the world’s most secretive companies. In piercing Exxon’s crude-black veil, Coll is doing more than describing the inner operations of a successful multinational. He is investigating an organization that, in size and influence, may as well be its own nation with its own sovereign interests — a “corporate state within the American state,” as Coll puts it. In capturing the mind-boggling scope of Exxon’s activity, Coll also offers crash courses in the finer points of oil exploration, the bizarre and brutal history of Equatorial Guinea, the rise of piracy in Nigeria, the eco-guerilla movement, resource management in post-Soviet Russia, the finer points of campaign-finance law, the apportionment of oil field contracts in post-war Iraq, and the battle for Acehnese independence. (NB: This is a much-abridged list.)

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by Daniel J. Weiss and Rebecca Leber

Together the big five oil companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell—earned a combined $33.5 billion, or $368 million per day, during the first quarter of 2012.

Recall that these companies made a combined record profit of $137 billion in 2011, mostly due to high oil and gasoline prices. Their ongoing huge earnings mean that these companies do not need $24 billion for a decade’s worth of tax breaks, particularly since the three American companies pay relatively low effective federal tax rates.

Profits for Chevron continued to grow during the first quarter of 2012 compared to this time last year, while they fell slightly for Shell and ConocoPhillips. ExxonMobil and BP saw a decline in first-quarter profits mainly due to reduced oil production (both) and very low natural gas prices (Exxon).

Cumulatively, profits were 7 percent lower than the first quarter of 2011. And more than one-quarter of these profits were used to repurchase companies’ stock. Meanwhile, CEO compensation grew by a whopping average of 55 percent.

Below we dig a little deeper into the big five’s latest earnings—including how they spent them—and explain why companies this profitable should not be receiving billions in tax breaks especially when this money could be spent on other national priorities.

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Last year, ExxonMobil, one of the world’s most profitable companies, earned $1,300 in profits per second. As consumers paid record-high springtime gas prices, Exxon posted first quarter profits of $9.45 billion.

This is down slightly from the first quarter of 2011, when Exxon posted $10.65 billion in profits. Exxon benefited from the high price of oil, but analysts expected slightly lower profits due in part to the cheap price of natural gas, which the company is heavily invested in.

A by-the-numbers look shows how Exxon’s executives and Big Oil’s allies are rewarded generously for the company’s billions, while Americans are stuck with rising gas bills:

$9.45 billion profits, or almost $104 million per day in the first three months of the year.

13 percent: The tax rate Exxon paid last year, lower than the average American family.

60 percent of its first quarter earnings, or $5.7 billion, on buying back stock. Became world’s largest dividend payer by increasing dividends 21 percent.

$1,091,000: Political contributions sent to federal politicians for the 2012 election cycle, making it the largest oil and gas spender.

91% of these contributions went to Republicans.

More than $52,000,000: Lobbying for the first three years of the Obama presidency, 50 percent more than in the Bush Administration.

$34.9 million: Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson’s salary for 2011, a 20 percent raise.

$52,300: Political contributions from Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson in the 2012 cycle, alone.

No. 2: Fortune 500 list of richest companies and for highest-paid CEO.

Exxon not only used 60 percent of its Q1 profits to buy back its stocks, enriching executives and largest shareholders, but it funnels money through political groups like American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and American Petroleum Institute, to influence legislation in its favor.