Big Tech’s pain has been Big Oil’s gain. High oil and gas prices have squeezed consumer wallets. Large companies’ cuts to cloud and advertising budgets are causing tech sector angst. But for energy producers, it has been another quarter of record-busting profits.
US supermajors ExxonMobil and Chevron raked in nearly $31bn in combined net income during the third quarter. That is more than twice what they brought in a year ago. Exxon posted the highest profit in its 152-year history, while Chevron announced its second-best quarterly result ever. Their earnings follow a string of similarly strong results from European energy groups earlier this week.
At Exxon and Chevron, the windfalls were driven by higher oil production and natural gas prices, along with strong earnings from their “downstream” oil refining businesses. Both have their best balance sheets since at least 2014, when crude prices also traded in triple digits.