By Sabrina Valle
HOUSTON – Exxon Mobil Corp on Friday posted its biggest quarterly profit ever on the back of soaring energy prices and as it kept a tight rein on spending.
The top U.S. oil producer reported second-quarter net income of $17.9 billion, or $4.21 per share, an almost four-fold increase over the $4.69 billion, or $1.10 per share, it earned in the same period last year.
Oil and natural gas prices have scaled multi-year highs this year as Western sanctions against major exporter Russia squeezed an already under-supplied global market. Margins for making fuels like gasoline and diesel surged worldwide, boosting the profits of oil giants, including European majors Shell and TotalEnergies , both of which reported results on Thursday.
Exxon’s results also beat its best quarter of 2008, when Brent crude oil prices peaked at $147 per barrel, and its best-ever quarter reached in 2012, when the company earned $15.9 billion, largely due to asset sales in Japan and tax-related items.
Exxon’s first-quarter profits led U.S. President Joe Biden last month to say the company and other oil majors were capitalizing on a global supply shortage to fatten profits. Exxon, he said, was making “more money than God” after posting its biggest quarterly profit in seven years.
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Exxon has been using extra cash to pay down debt and raise distributions to shareholders. It maintained its 88-cent-per-share dividend for the third quarter.
The company earlier this year more than doubled its projected buyback program to $30 billion through 2022 and 2023. Shell and Total on Thursday extended their share buybacks after their second-quarter results both beat what had been a record-breaking previous quarter.
Exxon kept its capital investments at $9.5 billion in the first half of the year, in line with full-year guidance. The profit included a $300 million booked identified item associated with the sale of the Barnett Shale upstream asset.
(Reporting by Sabrina Valle; Editing by Leslie Adler)