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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Royal Dutch Shell’s profits rose 15.9 percent in the first quarter of 2012, netting $7.3 billion.  Shell’s CEO Peter Voser attributed the increase in part to “strong oil prices,” which rose to over $100 a barrel this quarter.

In 2011, Shell’s profits soared 54 percent to $3.5 million every hour, despite producing 3 percent less oil. This time, it produced 4 percent more than Q1 in 2011.

A few facts about Shell:

Shell posted $7.3 billion in profits for quarter one, or $80.2 million per day.

It is the second-largest lobbyist in oil and gas, lobbying $14.6 million in 2011. This is up from 10 million in 2009 and 2010.

Shell reported 63 operational oil spills in 2011, double the number from 2010. This is due to a spill in Nigeria, which Amnesty International alleges is 60 times worse than Shell originally claimed.

Shell has more than $10 billion in cash reserves as of January 2012.

Shell CEO Peter Voser’s compensation more than doubled in 2011 to $15.3 million. His salary increased (in euros) by 113 percent. Even though oil production dropped 3 percent.

The company plans to drill in the Arctic Ocean, spending more than $4 billion over five years in “its quest to exploit the vast oil and natural gas resources believed to lie beneath the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas off the north coast of Alaska,” according to the New York Times.

Chevron is the fourth Big Oil company to announce its profits tomorrow.

Related Story:

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

“The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) today issued an approval of Shell Gulf of Mexico, Inc.’s Oil Spill Response Plan for the Beaufort Sea,” the Department of Interior agency tasked with approving oil spill plans has announced. Shell plans to drill up to four shallow water exploration wells in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea this summer, beginning on July 1. The expansion of offshore drilling into the dangerous and fragile Arctic seas not only threatens that ecosystem with unmanageable disaster, but represents a reckless disregard for the urgency of decarbonizing the global economy to avoid the risk of unstoppable global warming.

A major report on the prospect of offshore drilling in the Arctic by the Center for American Progress concludes that the oil industry is not prepared to prevent disaster to this remote and fragile region. The Obama administration’s offshore drilling oversight agency, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, has approved Royal Dutch Shell’s plan to begin exploratory drilling in the Chukchi Sea beginning in the summer of 2012, pending approval by other agencies.

In “Putting a Freeze on Arctic Ocean Drilling: America’s Inability to Respond to an Oil Spill in the Arctic,” the authors, Kiley Kroh, Michael Conathan, and Emma Huvos, investigate the prospect of drilling in some of the most extreme conditions on Earth, and find the preparations by the oil and gas industry, federal agencies, and Congress are inadequate, overstretched, and untested:

This report outlines the specific shortcomings in both Shell’s response plans and the private- and public-sector response capabilities to a devastating oil spill in the Arctic region of the United States. Failing to meet the targets laid out here will expose the residents and natural resources of one of the last unspoiled places on the planet to an unacceptable level of risk. Until the oil and gas industry and its federal partners can demonstrate with certainty that they can identify and respond to a true worst-case scenario incident, the Arctic should remain off-limits to exploration and drilling.

In one telling example of dangerous shortcuts in the rush to drilling, Shell’s spill response plan describes a “worst-case scenario” of a spill happening in the relatively warm month of August, although it submitted plans to drill into the drastically harsher month of October.

The report also contrasts the very limited infrastructure for oil spill response in Alaska to the robust infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico (which was still unable to prevent serious harm from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster).

In October, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrator Jane Lubchenco told ThinkProgress Green that the implications of accelerating climate change by drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic has “huge implications for the global system.” Although NOAA is the nation’s top oceanographic agency, its scientists play only a minor, advisory role in the government’s approval of offshore drilling, which is run by the Interior Department. NOAA plays a larger role in cleaning up after oil spills.

Below is the summary of CAP’s recommendations for what needs to happen before offshore Arctic drilling should proceed: Read more

An oil spill near the coast of Nigeria is likely the worst to hit those waters in a decade, a government official said Thursday, as slicks from the Royal Dutch Shell PLC spill approached the country’s southern shoreline.

The slick from Shell’s Bonga field has affected 115 miles (185 kilometers) of ocean near Nigeria’s coast, Peter Idabor, who leads the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, told The Associated Press. Idabor said the slick continued to move toward the shore Thursday night, putting at risk birds, fish and other wildlife in the area.

Shell, the major oil producer in Nigeria, said late Thursday the spill came from a “flexible export line” connecting the offshore field to a waiting tanker. The company published photographs of the spill, showing a telltale rainbow sheen in the ocean, but said it believes that about 50 percent of the leaked oil has already evaporated.

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Other stories below: Philippine Death Toll Rises in Worst Cyclone in Three Years; India May Jump in Solar Trade War

Shell spills 13,000 gallons while drilling near Deepwater Horizon site

Shell International spilled 13,000 gallons of oil and drilling fluids into the Gulf on Sunday while drilling an exploratory well near the site of last year’s Deepwater Horizon accident, according to a federal report on the spill.

The area where the well was being drilled is about 20 miles from the site of the BP oil spill. Shell is working in water more than 7,000 feet deep. The well was being drilled by the Deepwater Nautilus, according to federal records. That rig is owned and operated by Transocean, the company that owned the Deepwater Horizon rig.

While a report Shell filed Monday morning with the National Response Center states that the company spilled 7,560 gallons of oil and 5,829 gallons of synthetic drilling fluids, company spokesperson Kelly op de Weegh said late Monday afternoon that no oil was spilled.

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