Cha-ching! That's the sound of the major oil companies' record-smashing $50 billion in second-quarter profits — nearly double the gains from this time last year. Ballooning energy prices following Russia's invasion of Ukraine delivered the cash windfall to the major Western oil powers: Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, BP and TotalEnergies. For Exxon and Chevron, the two largest oil companies in the United States, profits more than tripled from this time last year. The blockbuster earnings come as sky-high gasoline costs eat into consumers' wallets, helping drive inflation to new heights, and weather disasters spurred by burning fossil fuels wreak havoc across the globe. The untimely cocktail is threatening a political backlash against energy companies as the White House weighs congressional proposals to implement a windfall tax on the profits. President Joe Biden last month said , "Exxon made more money than God this year" and pledged he would "make sure everyone knows Exxon's profits." Exxon and Chevron have pushed back, saying they are boosting supply to meet new demand, yet their capital spending remains far lower than before the pandemic brought the economy to a halt. (The companies will give more cash to shareholders than they invest in oil and gas production this year, Bloomberg reported.) Republicans, meanwhile, blame Biden for the high gas prices. The companies also note that they are dealing with the same labor shortage issues playing out across the economy. Oil field jobs have not recovered from the pandemic and recession of two years ago. That may also reflect shifts to new technology and the push for renewable power. Still, the cash bonanza is already drawing the ire of environmentalists and Democratic lawmakers. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) took to Twitter to announce a new bill that would require oil companies to "start paying their fair share." "It's time for our tax code to reward working families — not oil execs getting rich," he said. Kelly Sheehan, the Sierra Club's senior director of energy campaigns, called the profit spike "shameful." "We must act urgently to transition to a more stable clean energy economy, and to hold Big Oil accountable for their price-gouging by taxing their massive windfall profits," Sheehan said in a statement. That kind of rhetoric is a "distraction," wrote Megan Barnett Bloomgren, the American Petroleum Institute's senior vice president for communications. She said in a blog post that the stunning profits indicate the sector "is a large, robust driver of the U.S. economy — benefiting millions of American households through individually owned stocks, mutual funds, retirement accounts and other financial instruments." About 58 percent of Americans own stock, including retirement accounts, according to Gallup — though the Federal Reserve notes that the wealthiest 10 percent own 89 percent of all U.S. stocks.
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