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$236 Per American Driver: Big Oil’s U.S. Profits From The Last Year

Sky-high gas prices mean hardship for American families but huge profits for big oil companies.

According to a new study from the Center for American Progress Action Fund, their U.S. profits from the last 12 months were the equivalent to $236 from every single person with a drivers license in America.

In the past year, oil and gasoline prices have broken all records. Oil reached $147 a barrel, and gasoline hit a new high of $4.11 a gallon earlier this month. Oil prices were 90 percent higher over the past three months than they were a year ago.

Today, Exxon Mobil announced that they had made $11.7 billion in the last three months, the most profitable quarter ever for an American company.The other big five oil companies announced earnings 26% higher than this same period last year, putting them on track to break last year’s record profits.

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High prices may be good for oil company profits, but they’re bad news for American families. Higher gasoline prices are costing ordinary families hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars a year.

In the past 12 months, the five largest oil companies have earned $148 billion world wide, including an estimated $47 billion in the United States. To put these numbers in perspective: if these U.S. profits were distributed evenly among American drivers, it would equal about $236 per driver.

At a time of record profits, the United States should be focused on providing relief to families, not padding the profits of big oil with John McCain’s tax plan that would give $4 billion in tax breaks to America’s five largest oil companies and $1.2 billion to Exxon Mobil alone.

For more information, check out the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s full report here.

UPDATE: Chevron has since released their Q2 2008 profits: $5.98 billion in the last three months, up 11% from the same period last year. While slightly less than predicted in our report, it doesn’t significantly change the per-driver share of the five companies’ U.S. profits over the past year which remains approximately $236 per American driver.