2022 Oil Profits - Key Facts

The quarterly earnings announcements of major publicly-traded oil companies from 2022 have been record breaking. The 28 companies tracked below have reported an eye-popping $402 billion in profits in 2022.

While 2021 was already a banner year for oil profits, profits skyrocketed in 2022.

• 21 out of the 28 companies we tracked in 2022 more than doubled their 2021 profits. 

• Some companies such as Valero and Equinor saw their annual profits spike by more than 900% and 600% respectively. 

• The companies we tracked saw an overall increase in profits averaging 147%.

Consumers paid at the pump to reward wealthy executives and shareholders.

• Oil companies we tracked spent $114.6 billion on stock buybacks and another $100 billion on dividends to funnel cash into the pockets of wealthy executives and shareholders.

• Chevron alone announced plans to begin an additional round of $75 billion in stock buybacks.

Oil companies spent millions on donations, influence and lobbying.

• The oil and gas industry also spent $124 million on lobbying Congress in 2022, fighting against the Inflation Reduction Act and working to kill a proposed windfall profits tax.

• The oil and gas industry contributed $38.4 million to help elect Republican candidates in the 2022  cycle, and now  pro-oil politicians are in charge of key committees. 

• BP, Shell, and ExxonMobil also announced plans to scale back their investments in clean energy.

• For context, the single-year profits from the oil companies we tracked could more than pay for the Inflation Reduction Act’s entire 10 years of investments ($369 billion) in lowering energy costs and securing a clean energy future.

*Oil companies will typically report several different metrics of profitability. Net income as defined under U.S. GAAP accounting rules is what they are required to report in SEC filings, however adjusted earnings is usually what the companies lead with in press releases and what financial journalists tend to report. For this report, we tracked adjusted earnings.

2022 Domestic Oil Companies Tax Analysis

Tax Refund: Halliburton recorded a $17 million tax benefit on U.S. income taxes, despite reporting U.S. net income before tax of almost $1 billion, and overall adjusted earnings of almost $2 billion.

Zero Income Taxes: Three companies again paid zero in federal income tax after paying nothing in 2021 as well. All three of these companies showed positive earnings before taxes (EBT) in both  2021 and 2022 and all three grew in that metric in 2022.

• Hess Corporation

• Marathon Oil Corp

• Murphy Oil

Near-Zero Income Taxes: Four companies paid effectively close to nothing in federal income taxes (less than 0.5% effective tax rate)

• APA Corporation (0.04%)

• Cheniere Energy (-0.38%

• EQT Corporation (0.03%)

• Ovintiv Inc (0.28%)

Tax Bills Defying Income Growth: 3 Companies saw their federal income tax payments go down, despite growth in earnings before tax (EBT)

• APA Corporation (EBT grew $2 billion while taxes decreased by $15 million)

• EQT Corporation (EBT grew by $3.9 billion while taxes decreased by $260,000)

• Halliburton (EBT grew by $709 million while taxes decreased by $23 million)

Taxes Avoided: Every company except Murphy Oil reported adjusted net income of over $1 billion in 2022, which will make them subject to the IRA’s 15% minimum tax rate starting in 2023. 

• In 2022, only 4 out of 21 companies paid more than a 15% effective tax rate.

• None of the companies we tracked paid the full statutory 21% corporate income tax rate.

  • If every company had paid the full 21% corporate income tax rate, it would have generated an additional $21.2 billion in revenue.

Climate Power tracked the U.S. tax disclosures recorded in the footnotes to financial statements of 21 domestic, publicly-traded oil and gas companies. This information is reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Form 10-K. 

Federal income tax as used in this memo refers to the tax expense (or benefit) for current federal income taxes. This excludes entries for deferred income taxes, or taxes paid to state or local, or foreign governments, which may also be included as components of tax expenses on consolidated financial statements.

Table 1: 2022 Profits Of Major Oil Companies

Table 2: 2022 Year-Over-Year Adjusted Earnings Growth Of Major Oil Companies

Table 3: 2022 Stock Buyback Spending Of Major Oil Companies

Table 4: 2022 Dividend Spending Of Major Oil Companies

Table 5: 2022 U.S. Federal Income Taxes

Table 6: 2021 U.S. Federal Income Taxes

Table 7: Hypothetical Taxes Avoided