The Latest
All of the most recent updates on fossil fuel industry bailouts.
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.
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.
Analysis
Sundance Energy seeks bankruptcy protection after laying off workers and approving executive bonuses
The bailout double-dipper reported a brief spike in employment when obtaining a bailout, raising questions about the truthfulness of its application.
News Roundups
Katie Porter targets Big Oil, private equity chiefs get payouts, and more
Weekly news headlines about the stimulus and recovery.
Analysis
Federal watchdog probes Ted Cruz’s oil bailout lobbying
After a Wall Street Journal investigation citing BailoutWatch, the Inspector General overseeing CARES Act bailouts has subpoenaed Cruz’s office about his efforts to expand bailouts for oil and gas.
Analysis
Dakota Access Pipeline builder Energy Transfer LP making $7B acquisition after tax bailout, mass layoffs
The deal to buy out Enable Midstream Partners after laying off 1,391 workers shows how Texas billionaire Kelcy Warren will use millions in government givebacks.
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.
News Roundups
Is financial regulation the way to deal with climate change? Exxon loses a lot of oil, and more
Weekly news headlines about the stimulus and recovery.
Report
Urgewald: Financial Backers of Global Coal
A groundbreaking report finds that U.S. investors account for 58% of institutional investments in the global coal industry.
Analysis
Bailed-out, bankrupt oil firms pay millions in executive bonuses while laying off workers
Sen. Ted Cruz and other champions of fossil fuel bailouts said sending government funds to fossil fuels would protect workers. But the companies are giving executives bonuses, slashing jobs, and forcing investor losses in court.
Report
Friends of the Earth: Chasing Carbon Unicorns
This report argues that the current definition of net zero creates environmental and social problems through carbon offset markets, and that a shift to "real zero" targets is needed.
News Roundups
COVID's drag on oil, pollution's death toll and more
Weekly news headlines about the stimulus and recovery.
Report
Brookings: How Biden and Congress can use COVID-related corporate stimulus to boost climate resilience
Brookings arges that the U.S. should use pandemic recovery funds to incentivize corporations to better confront their own climate risk exposure.
News Roundups
Oil companies endure brutal 2020, pandemic watchdog probles Mnuchin & Cruz, and more
Weekly news headlines about the stimulus and recovery.
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
House Natural Resources Committee: Dirty Deals
Committee staff detail the major damage done to the environment, economy, and energy supply of the United States during the four years of the Trump administration.
Report
PSS: Are There Offsets to Pandemic Impacts?
During the pandemic, utilities could save customers millions or billions of dollars by refinancing some portion of their existing debt.
Report
GAO: COVID-19 Loans Lack Controls and Are Susceptible to Fraud
The GAO found that the speed with which SBA implemented their pandemic loan programs may have increased their susceptibility to fraud.
Report
SIGPR: Quarterly Report to Congress
In its quarterly report to Congress, SIGPR reports the dollar amount of loans that have thus far been issued under pandemic recovery programs through the Fed and Treasury, and makes two administrative recommendations.
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.
Report
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis: Prioritizing Wall Street
Subcommittee staff found that the beneficiaries of the Fed's bond purchases during the pandemic have mostly benefitted corporate executives and investors, instead of workers.
Report
SIGPR: Initial Report to Congress
In its first report to Congress, the office of the Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery details its activities, interpreted jurisdiction and two recommendations.