Global energy giant Shell has followed U.S.-based Exxon Mobil and Chevron to double its annual profits with a record high last year as oil and natural gas prices soared on the back of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
AP reports London-based Shell Plc posted adjusted earnings of $39.9 billion for 2022 in its financial results for the final three months of the year. Adjusted earnings in the fourth quarter, which exclude one-time items and fluctuations in the value of inventories, rose to $9.8 billion.
Exxon Mobil also made $56 billion in profit last year, its largest annual haul ever. Chevron earned $36 billion, another company record, the New York Times reports.
Shell is the latest oil company to report bumper profits, the best in its 115-year history, even as the fossil fuel industry faces increasing pressure to carbon emissions and governments look to enforce higher windfall taxes, as Breitbart News reported.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) changed his plan for a windfall tax on oil company profits to describe the tax as a “penalty” to avoid a requirement that new taxes be passed by a two-thirds vote in the state legislature. https://t.co/8d3h9mojoS
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) December 7, 2022
Exxon Mobil posted its record annual profits days earlier while U.K. rival BP and France’s TotalEnergies posted huge quarterly profits last year.
The results demonstrate Shell’s “capacity to deliver vital energy to our customers in a volatile world,” new CEO Wael Sawan said in a statement seen by AP.
Shell also is raising its dividend payout by 15 percent and buying back $4 billion worth of shares — moves that underline the tension between energy company shareholders seen as reaping big profits and consumers weighed down by higher costs for heating their homes and simply filling up their cars for day-to-day use.