Over the past several weeks the world’s largest oil companies -- or, energy companies, as they like to call themselves – announced their record profits for 2022. Starting with Shell and Exxon, followed by BP, Chevron, and the French company Total Energies, all announced their profits were double what they were in 2021.
They earned money for their shareholders as people struggled with the high cost of gas and transportation, which led to higher costs of everything including interest rates. Their combined profits total five times more than our foreign aid budget. And since their pump prices are so similar, one cannot help but wonder if there is not collusion.
Where is the trust-busting of a previous age? These companies spend more in lobbying our elected representatives than the budgets of small countries, not to mention some of our own states. But money seems to rule – in Congress as well as other places. Where will that money take us as we struggle to prevent a climate catastrophe?
Prayer for the Day
Scripture tells us, O God, that prophets of old,
Speaking for the poor, railed against ill-gotten gains;
But the prophets of our age seem not to be heeded,
Not even by those in power who imprisoned them in the past.
Give us voices, O God, who cry out against such corruption,
Disturbing their comfort and upending their might.
In the name of the One who overturned tables of theft,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
The picture is clear now, no oil major has plans to drive down emissions this decade. Now it’s up to the shareholders. Together with major investors, we continue to compel BP to put its full weight behind the energy transition.
- Mark van Baal, founder, Follow This, an activist shareholder group
We can’t allow multinational oil companies boasting of record profits to gouge consumers. We must do what we can to fix this problem.
- Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, attorney, former Representative,
South Dakota
Ha! You who hide a plan too deep for the Lord, whose deeds are in the dark
And who say, “Who sees us? Who knows us?” you turn things upside down!
Shall the potter be regarded as the clay? Shall the thing say of its maker,
“He did not make me”; or the thing formed say of the one who formed it,
“He has no understanding?”
Isaiah 29: 15-16