Americans, especially those in the poor and working classes are suffering from very high gas prices. Some want to blame President Biden, and others want to blame Vladimir Putin. Both are wrong! It's the Big Oil companies that are taking advantage of the current situation to increase their already exorbitant profits.
Here's part of how former Labor Secretary Robert Reich describes it:
Guess who’s making no sacrifice at all — in fact, who’s reaping a giant windfall from this crisis?
As crude oil prices hit levels not seen in more than 13 years, Big Oil has hit a gusher. Even before Putin’s war, oil prices had begun to rise due to the recovery in global demand and tight inventories. Last year, when Americans were already struggling to pay their heating bills and fill up their gas tanks, the biggest oil companies (Shell, Chevron, BP, and Exxon) posted profits totaling $75 billion. This year, courtesy of Vladimir Putin, Big Oil is on the way to a far bigger bonanza.
How are the oil companies using all this windfall? I can assure you they’re not investing in renewables. They’re not even increasing oil production. As Chevron’s top executive Mike Wirth said in September, “we could afford to invest more” but “the equity market is not sending a signal that says they think we ought to be doing that.” Translated: Wall Street says the way to maximize profits is to limit supply and push up prices instead.
So they’re buying back their own stock in order to give their stock prices even more of a boost. Last year they spent $38 billion on stock buybacks — their biggest buyback spending spree since 2008. This year, thanks largely to Putin, the oil giants are planning to buy back at least $22 billion more.
Make no mistake. This is a direct redistribution from consumers who are paying through the nose at the gas pump to Big Oil’s investors and top executives (whose compensation packages are larded with shares of stock and stock options).
Though it’s seldom discussed in the media, lower-income earners and their families bear the brunt of the burden of higher gas prices. Not only are lower-income people less likely to be able to work from home, they’re also more likely to commute for longer distances between work and home in order to afford less expensive housing.
Big oil companies could absorb the higher costs of crude oil. The reason they’re not is because they’re so big they don’t have to. They don’t worry about losing market share to competitors. So they’re passing on the higher costs to consumers in the form of higher prices, and pocketing record profits.
It’s the same old story in this country: when crisis strikes, the poor and working class are on the frontlines while the biggest corporations and their investors and top brass rake it in.
