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Exxon record-breaking profits

Feb 11, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – ExxonMobil keeps breaking its own profit records.  However well the company did in previous good years, 2022 blew all those to pieces. ExxonMobil made the astronomical sum of US$55.7B, almost 14 times Guyana’s 2023 budget for the whole country.  ExxonMobil made US$55.7B in 2022, while Guyana barely crept over the US$1B mark in what was deposited in this country’s US-housed oil fund.

Though, there is understanding and acceptance that ExxonMobil earned some of its billions from the Permian Basin and other places, plus other businesses, Guyana’s high-quality, cheap oil had to be a significant contributor to the company’s profits that are now the envy of the world.

In 2021, the company’s CEO, Darren Woods, total compensation package was about US$23.5M, which is a pretty penny for any one man by any consideration.  Now, using variations of Mr. Woods’s earnings, with his own as the highest, this could be estimated to mean that the total compensation package for the top 100employees of ExxonMobil, added together, was close, if not more than Guyana’s total oil take, as deposited in the National Resource Fund account in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. For emphasis, on a pure approximation basis, the 100 most highly compensated (salaries, bonus, stock options) most likely made more money than between 750,000 to 780,000 Guyanese, this country’s entire population, got from their immense oil wealth.

To look at this from another angle, the sum of the total compensation packages for the 200-300 ExxonMobil workers rewarded in the highest monetary terms is bigger by a bundle of billions than Guyana’s record breaking national budget for 2023.  Whether the ExxonMobil top worker to local population comparison is used, or a near similar sub-group of ExxonMobil employees is put to the side of Guyana’s biggest budget, this country and its citizens always end up on the losing side of the equation. Or as His Excellency, President Ali did say, holding the “wrong end of the stick.”  If this is not high seas and highway robbery of the worst sort, then somebody please give us a hand on where and how we are going wrong.

Darren Woods made US$23 plus million in 2022.  In view of his company shattering its previous profit record, it is inevitable that Mr. Woods will break the bank with his 2022 compensation package.  There has to be some reward for having Guyana political leaders eating out of his hands, running around to fill his commands and expectations.  He is easily going to rise to somewhere between US$25M to US$30M, looking at this conservatively.  Darren Woods is breaking the bank from Guyana’s cheap oil, while Guyanese are lining up in the hope that their bank still stands with some money remaining in its vaults for them.  The highflying, fancy talking Alistair Routledge, ExxonMobil’s Guyana Country Head is guaranteed his fat share of money for keeping the PPPC Government and Guyanese people on a short leash.

This is the raw, ragged roguishness of this great Guyanese oil treasure. ExxonMobil cruising at 35,000 feet counting its profits from Guyana’s free oil (almost), while Guyanese are forced to claw about in the weeds for any pittance that they can clamp their empty hands upon.  From our standpoint, something is really disturbing about this nightmare of a picture.  The poor, agonized citizens of this country cannot get a break.  The Coalition APNU+AFC sold out their birthright for a giveaway price, and there were howls of protest from all over.  Now, it is the PPPC Government’s in charge, and its top people are just as hamstrung and hobbled as the former Coalition, but even more fearful of asking for a better deal for Guyana. The difference today is that fewer and fewer Guyanese are getting in the faces of the President and Vice President to demand that they get more for us.

In fact, there are Guyanese now cheering what ExxonMobil is doing to this country and its citizens under the same 2016 oil contract that they were once cursing, what they were calling a crime without compare. The politicians keep Guyanese in this state, so that they can steal at will, while foreigners get richer, and locals are on their knees.

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