Nearly 200 billion dollars! The five oil giants made record profits last year

In the past year, the global oil and gas giants have made amazing record profits.

At present, the results released by ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP (British Petroleum Corporation) and Total Energy show that the total net profit of the five western oil giants is close to 200 billion dollars.

In 2022, driven by the recovery of global energy demand and the Russian-Uzbekistan conflict, the global main energy prices soared, and oil and natural gas became one of the most profitable businesses in the world, which also made the net profit scale of oil and gas giants reach a record high level.

ExxonMobil is the largest oil and gas producer in the United States and the most profitable company among the five giants. The revenue in 2022 was 413.68 billion US dollars, up 45% year on year; Net profit was US $55.74 billion, up 142% year on year. The adjusted net profit reached US $59.1 billion, breaking the record of its highest profit set in 2008, and also setting a new record for the profits of western oil giants.

Shell's adjusted profit in 2022 reached a record US $39.9 billion, more than doubled from US $19.29 billion in 2021, and far exceeded the previous record of US $31 billion in 2008.

Chevron achieved a revenue of US $235.7 billion (about 1.6 trillion yuan) in 2022, an increase of 51.48% year on year; The adjusted profit reached US $36.5 billion, more than twice that of US $15.6 billion in 2021, and about US $10 billion higher than the previous record set in 2011.

Total's net profit in 2022 reached US $20.5 billion, up 28% from 2021. If the loss caused by Total's departure from Russia in 2022 is not included, the adjusted net profit of the year is higher, reaching 36.2 billion US dollars, which is considered as the highest annual profit in the company's history.

BP's basic replacement cost profit last year reached US $27.7 billion (about 188 billion yuan), more than double the US $12.8 billion in the previous year, and more than US $26.3 billion in 2008, the highest profit since the company was founded.

The high profits and the rising prices of the people have pushed energy enterprises to the forefront.

According to US CNBC, US President Joe Biden said in his State of the Union address on Tuesday: "Big oil companies have just announced record profits. Last year, they made nearly 200 billion dollars in the global energy crisis. This is outrageous."

Biden said that the domestic oil giants in the United States invested too little to increase domestic production to help maintain a low level of natural gas prices. "On the contrary, they use these record profits to buy back their shares and repay their chief executives and shareholders."

Biden proposed to double the share repurchase tax of the company to stimulate long-term investment, and insisted that the super giant would still make considerable profits.

The European side has taken substantive action. In September 2022, the European Council approved the imposition of a windfall tax on fossil fuel companies across the EU to finance families and enterprises facing high energy prices.

The energy giants feel the pressure of windfall profits tax. On December 28 last year, ExxonMobil filed a lawsuit against the two branches of the European Union General Court in Germany and the Netherlands to prevent the EU from imposing a windfall tax on the profits of energy producers. The lawsuit of ExxonMobil said that the European Commission lacked the power to levy taxes and opposed the EU's process of using emergency procedures to formulate legislation.