The Latest
All of the most recent updates on fossil fuel industry bailouts.
Data
Big Oil's Wartime Buyback Bonanza
Amid high gas prices and war in recent months, the US's largest oil and gas companies have seen profits soar. These 20 companies, who received billions in taxpayer dollars during the coronavirus crisis, are using windfall profits to buyback billions of dollar worth of shares to enrich shareholders and executives. In the first five months of 2022, eight companies authorized plans to buy back and retire $46 billion in stock — a 116% increase over the $21.2 billion in buybacks authorized throughout all of 2021. A full $36 billion of those buyback authorizations came since the start of February 2022, as Russian preparations for their eventual invasion of Ukraine sent oil prices skyrocketing.
Analysis
Big Oil's Wartime Bonus: An Update on How It Turns Profits Into Wealth
Explosion in buybacks, dividends continues into Q2 2022 as updated data shows $46B in buyback announcements and $8.3B in special, windfall dividends
Analysis
Top Oil & Gas Firms Increased Layoffs, Cutting 15k Jobs in 2021
Awash in cash, the fossil fuel industry is laying off workers and increasing pay to executives while it funnels funds to insiders and Wall Street
Analysis
Powerless in the Pandemic 2.0: Electric Utilities Are Still Choosing Profits Over People
Electric utilities shut off power 3.6 million times since 2020 while increasing payouts to shareholders, according to new research from the Center for Biological Diversity and BailoutWatch
Analysis
Big Oil's Wartime Bonus: How Big Oil Turns Profits Into Wealth
Amid high gas prices and humanitarian crisis in Europe, the biggest US-based oil and gas companies plan to spend more than $45 billion buying back their own shares, enriching investors and insiders. They also boosted dividend payouts, some by extravagant amounts.
Data
Big Oil's Wartime Dividend Bump to Wall Street
Amid high gas prices and war in recent month, the US's largest oil and gas companies have seen profits soar. These 20 companies, who received billions in taxpayer dollars during the coronavirus crisis, are passing newfound profits off to Wall Street in the form of massive dividend payouts. Eighteen of the companies reviewed in the report linked below increased their dividends in the past year. Eleven of the companies increased their payouts by at least 100%, some from zero, since the first quarter of 2021. On top of record quarterly dividend payouts, five of the company's past further profits onto shareholders in the form of variable dividends.
Analysis
Lawmakers ask why utilities left poor Americans powerless in the pandemic
Top members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee demanded answers this week about how Duke, Dominion, and four others shut off families’ electricity, increasing their risks during Covid-19. They cited reporting by BailoutWatch and the Center for Biological Diversity.
Analysis
All-American Oligarchs: The Big Oil CEOs profiting from war in Ukraine
While claiming to be the heroes of energy independence, Big Oil CEOs are cashing out, selling nearly $100 million worth of shares as the Ukraine war began
Analysis
US Banks and Asset Managers Fueled Russian Oil For Years. Now They’re Silent on Ukraine
With oil majors ending their Russia partnerships, it’s easy to forget who’s really funding Russian oil expansion: Citigroup, Blackrock, Vanguard
Data
US Financial Institution Holders of Russia's 10 Largest O&G Companies
US banks, asset managers, and investment advisors hold billions in shares of Russia's largest O&G companies, quietly funding the expansion of Russian O&G and the countries domination of Eurasian energy markets.
Analysis
Fossil fuel profits surged in 2021
Even before the Ukraine war pushed oil past $100 a barrel, fossil fuels were using multi-billion dollar windfalls to enrich insiders
Report
Sierra Club: The Failure of Fossil Fuels: Learning from Winter Storm Uri
For almost a week in February 2021, Winter Storm Uri slammed North America, leaving almost 10 million Americans without power. Millions of Americans will be paying higher gas bills for decades to come due to the gas system’s failures during this period.
Analysis
Fossil Fuels Used Our Money to Pay Executives and Harm Americans: A 2021 Roundup
A look back at BailoutWatch’s 2021 findings shows tens of billions in subsidies continue to benefit the fossil fuel industry while fossil fuels harm people and the environment
Data
US Oil and Gas Companies Share Repurchases
US O&G companies have continued to prioritize shareholder returns to lure investors through stock buybacks, despite continued dependence on the American taxpayer
Data
Senate Banking Committee O&G Donations
Energy and natural gas donations to members of the Senate Banking Committee as of November 31, 2021.
Analysis
Big Oil Fuels Opposition to Former Bush Financial Regulator Saule Omarova
Attacks on a key Biden administration appointee to regulate big banks are being funded and promoted by oil and gas interests, a sign of the job’s potential to limit risky lending to fossil fuels.
Guest Blog
Why Biden’s Financial Regulators Must Use Their Powers to Protect the Climate
Despite the fossil fuel industry’s successful campaign to capture Congress and cripple climate efforts, regulators who hide behind political dysfunction are missing the point. It is precisely their job to depoliticize this issue by admitting the very real, objectively undeniable financial and economic significance of climate change.
Report
Private Equity Propels the Climate Crisis
The private equity industry has pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into fossil fuel companies — offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, fracking operations, pipeline infrastructure and coal power plants — with minimal public scrutiny. Private equity investments in oil and gas are by definition exempt from most public disclosure rules.
Analysis
Powerless in the Pandemic: After Bailouts, Electric Utilities Chose Profits Over People
Electric Utilities Took $1.25 Billion in Pandemic Bailouts While Shutting Off Power to Households Nearly 1 Million Times, according to new research from BailoutWatch and the Center for Biological Diversity
Analysis
New Report reveals Big Oil’s $86B offshore tax bonanza
New research by BailoutWatch, Friends of the Earth, and Oxfam reveals a trove of international tax subsidies that exclusively benefit a handful of multinational polluters
Analysis
End of Fed bond-buying leaves fossil fuels stronger, masking their threat to financial system
The Federal Reserve has finished selling bonds purchased in a historic rescue that propped up the fossil fuel industry, presaging future bailouts
Analysis
GOP firebrand boosted fossil fuels without admitting her husband made nearly $1m from a driller
Rep. Lauren Boebert, one of Oil & Gas’ biggest defenders, was supposed to disclose her family’s income sources before the election. Instead, she waited and got named to the House Natural Resources Committee
Analysis
6 Bailed-Out Polluters Already Spent $15M This Year Lobbying For Subsidies And Against Climate Action
The biggest spenders in fossil fuel lobbying went hard to protect tax breaks, limit disclosure of their climate impacts, and fight methane regulation
Analysis
Fed Chair Powell's Policies Fuel Fossil Borrowing Binge
Oil and gas companies continued to issue new debt at a breakneck pace — even months after the Federal Reserve wound down pandemic programs designed to rev up bond markets, new data show
Data
Oil and Gas Bonds Issued Since the CARES Act
US oil and gas companies sold bonds worth $178 billion since the Federal Reserve’s CARES Act rescue last March, an unprecedented amount of new debt that has reshaped and propped up struggling fossil fuel firms.
News Roundups
Citgo To Pay For Spill, Investors Demand Environmental Disclosures, Infrastructure, And More
Weekly news headlines about the stimulus and recovery from June 25, 2021.
News Roundups
Oil Company Laid-off Thousands After Bailout, China Abandons Coal, and more
Weekly news headlines about the stimulus and recovery from June 18, 2021
News Roundups
Chinese Central Bank Backs Climate Risk Disclosure, Oil and Gas Companies Evade Cleanup, And More
Weekly news headlines about the stimulus and recovery from June 11, 2021.
Analysis
Seeking answers about fossil fuels’ bailouts, lawmakers instead learn the philosophy of ‘life-giving and persecuted’ oil and gas
Fossil fuel CEOs refused to take lawmakers’ questions about how they spent their bailout billions. Instead, a philosopher called for the ‘liberation’ of coal, oil, and gas
Data
Executive Compensation Data
Executive compensation data for fossil fuel companies with CEO Pay Ratios over 100 times larger than the median employee salary.
News Roundups
Pipeline hack, Fed presses banks on climate, and more
Weekly news headlines about the stimulus and recovery from May 14, 2021
Analysis
Pay gap widened between oil CEOs and their workers last year, even after bailouts and layoffs
The fossil fuel industry defends its jobs record. But we found a dozen top oil and gas companies paying top executives more than 100 times the median worker’s salary while laying people off — even after collecting billions in public aid.
Analysis
What fossil fuels really did with their bailouts
Our three-part analysis of 2020 annual reports and proxies found that oil, gas and coal companies received billions in bailout benefits, then paid off their shareholders and executives while laying off workers.
News Roundups
Solar jobs must quadruple, Kerry says we have to end fossil fuel subsidies, and more
Weekly news headlines about the stimulus and recovery from May 7, 2021
News Roundups
Gas is the new coal, infrastructure $ could help plug wells, and more
Weekly news headlines about the stimulus and recovery from April 30, 2021
Analysis
Fossil fuels used $100M tax bailouts to pay shareholders while slashing jobs
With oil and gas claiming they get “no special tax treatment,” new data show polluters with the biggest tax bailouts mostly used the money to increase payments to shareholders while eliminating jobs
News Roundups
Drillers Dying on the Vine, Big Bank Bucks, and More
Weekly news headlines about the stimulus and recovery from April 16, 2021
News Roundups
JPMorgan Secret Oil Emails, Private Equity Seeks Shale Escape, and More
Weekly news headlines about the stimulus and recovery from April 9th, 2020
Report
Ceres: Turning Up the Heat on Climate Financial Risk
While there has been early progress from U.S. financial regulators to acknowledge the systemic financial risks of climate change, most have yet to act in line with climate science and lag far behind their global counterparts.
Report
Yale: The producer benefits of implicit fossil fuel subsidies in the United States
A new paper published by the National Academy of Sciences finds that fossil fuels experience a direct benefit of $62 billion per year from indirect fossil fuel subsidies in the United States.
Analysis
Fossil fuel firms slashed nearly 60,000 jobs in 2020 while pocketing $8.2 billion tax bailout
As Washington weighs ending fossil fuel tax subsidies, oil and gas companies are quietly disclosing how many millions (or billions) they received from a pandemic tax break last year — and how many jobs they cut
News Roundups
Oil Titans work with White House, U.S Shale Rushes to Refinance Junk, and More
Daily news headlines about the stimulus and recovery from March 26 2021
Report
Rainforest Action Network: Banking on Climate Chaos 2021
In the five years since adoption of the Paris Agreement, 60 big banks have financed fossil fuels to the tune of $3.8 trillion.
News Roundups
House extends PPP, Texas regulator ousted, and more
Weekly news headlines about the stimulus and recovery from March 19, 2021.
News Roundups
Chevron revives Permian target, cleaning up abandoned wells, and more
Weekly news headlines about the stimulus and recovery.
Report
PERI: Employment Impacts of Proposed U.S. Economic Stimulus Programs
Researchers find that implementing the THRIVE agenda would create more than 15 million jobs per year.
Report
Evergreen Collaborative: Stop Investing in Pollution
Evergreen policy experts lay out an agenda for President Biden to fulfill his campaign pledge of ending fossil fuel subsidies.
Report
Rainforest Action Network: Fracking Fiasco
Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase have consistently been the biggest bankers of U.S. fracking, together providing almost 40% of financing since the Paris Agreement was adopted.