Exxon Mobil and Chevron amassed more than $30 billion in combined net income in Q3, as politicians criticised Big Oil for raking in massive profits at a time when consumers are struggling with soaring inflation and energy shortages worldwide.
Big Oil refers to the world’s six or seven largest publicly traded and investor-owned oil and gas companies.
Exxon posted the highest profit in its 152-year history, while Chevron announced its second-best quarterly result as natural gas demand and prices surged. Those earnings followed strong results posted by European peers Shell and TotalEnergies last week.
Even as the super majors bask in profits unimagined just two years ago during the darkest days of the pandemic, oil executives are under pressure by government leaders to ease prices at the pump for consumers and cut global-warming emissions.
Meanwhile, shareholders have been demanding higher returns and an end to costly exploration programmes, adding to commodity-price pressures.
For Exxon, third-quarter per-share profit of $4.68 exceeded $3.89 median estimate from analysts in a Bloomberg survey while net income of $19.7 billion surpassed the all-time high of $17.6 billion amassed during the second quarter.
Exxon bucked the trend of weaker refining earnings, benefiting from record crude-processing in North America and high diesel demand.
In Europe, a continent-wide scramble to stash natural gas ahead of winter swelled the prices Exxon received for the fuel by 22 per cent, more than offsetting the pain from a 12 per cent drop in what the company fetched for crude.
Meanwhile, Chevron’s third-quarter earnings of $5.56 per share surpassed the median $4.94 forecast among analysts in the Bloomberg Consensus. Net income was $11.2 billion, down slightly from the all-time high of more than $12 billion in the prior three months, according to a company statement
