[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 88 (Monday, July 10, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7262-S7264]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       OIL COMPANY FINANCIAL DATA

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I think we all know that during this part 
of the session the Senate is going to spend considerable time focusing 
on energy issues. That is certainly warranted because, if there is one 
thing that can be agreed on, getting a fresh energy policy is just 
about the most red, white, and blue step our country can take at this 
critical time.
  During the course of this debate, one issue that is sure to come up 
is the issue of oil company profits. The oil companies have 
consistently said that they need these very large profits in order to 
have the funds to drill and explore for new energy sources. I certainly 
feel strongly about developing new energy sources and increasing 
production, but I have been concerned about the role of government. At 
a time when the oil companies are making record profits and charging 
record prices, Congress has still been making available record 
subsidies. To get some clarity on this issue, I believed it was 
important to get the Congressional Research Service, the independent 
authority, to look at these issues, to analyze the question of exactly 
where the oil companies are putting this gusher of revenue they have 
accumulated recently. The findings in the new report the Congressional 
Research Service has given to me are striking.
  What the Congressional Research Service has found is that the return 
on equity of the major oil companies has gone up in the last few years 
six times; the amount of cash reserves of the major oil companies have 
has gone up, over the same time, about six times; but the amount of 
money the companies have devoted to exploration and capital investment 
has only doubled. So what that means, the bottom line, is that the 
major oil companies are only putting back in the ground a modest 
fraction of what they have been siphoning away from consumers at the 
pump across our country.
  What I would like to do is break down this report and talk about 
where I believe Congress ought to go on a bipartisan basis in the years 
ahead.

[[Page S7263]]

  On the issue of return on equity, I asked the Congressional Research 
Service to examine the years of 1999 to present. They found that, with 
respect to return on equity for the oil companies, it was about 4.5 
percent in 1999 and it is nearly 30 percent as of last year. That is an 
increase of more than six times over the last 6 years. The 
Congressional Research Service also looked at the cash reserves of the 
largest oil companies over the last 6 years. They have found that this, 
as well, has gone up sixfold. So the companies are clearly sitting on 
gushers of cash from higher oil prices and higher gas prices that 
consumers are now paying across the country.
  I believe it was then appropriate to have the Congressional Research 
Service analyze what the oil companies are doing with all of this 
money. Certainly the companies have made the argument that they are 
investing these profits in exploring for oil and developing new energy 
technology. That certainly is part of the story, but it is far from the 
whole picture.
  According to the Congressional Research Service, the major oil 
companies have approximately doubled their exploration costs and their 
overall capital investment over the past 6 years, but that rate of 
increase is just a fraction of how much their cash reserves and their 
return on equity have grown over that period. In addition, 
Congressional Research Service experts indicate that much of the oil 
companies' capital investment has been for operating expenses, not for 
increasing production, and much of what they seem to have invested in 
exploration has gone for overseas exploration.
  Again, you come back to what I think is the clear conclusion of this 
particular analysis: The American people are seeing the oil companies 
put back in the ground just a modest part of what the consumer is 
coughing up at gas pumps across the land.
  One of the questions I hope we will ask over this next period of the 
Senate being in session is, Why are the oil companies not putting some 
of their burgeoning cash reserves into investment in other 
technologies, particularly new renewable energy technologies which 
could help the oil industry diversify and help reduce our Nation's 
dependence on foreign energy? We ought to examine that issue, and 
certainly what the Congressional Research Service has done for my 
office makes a different contribution with respect to this debate and 
one that I think warrants thorough examination.
  The Congressional Research Service looked, for me, at the 10-K 
reports the oil companies file with the Securities and Exchange 
Commission. That is the information which Exxon and BP and Shell and 
Chevron and ConocoPhillips, Valero and Sunoco and Total report to their 
investors and to Wall Street. But what is in those 10-Ks that are given 
over to the Securities and Exchange Commission is not the story the oil 
companies seem to be telling the American people. The oil companies 
have been running ads in newspapers, claiming that their profits are in 
line with those of other industries. For example, the American 
Petroleum Institute has been running a newspaper ad showing the oil and 
natural gas industry's earnings of 5.9 cents on a dollar of sales, 
which is just above the 5.6-percent average for all industries. But 
suffice it to say, how many of the industries listed in these oil 
company ads are getting the 30-percent rate of return on equity that 
the Congressional Research Service has found in the report that I make 
public today?

  The oil industry wants the public to believe that the record profits 
they are making are in line with other businesses, but it seems to me 
the Congressional Research Service analysis of the oil companies' own 
reports to the Government tells a very different story. This is 
particularly important right now because I believe the American people 
deserve a true accounting of what has been going on behind the numbers 
at the gas pump and where their hard-earned money has been going for 
the past several years. The report I release today on oil company 
financial data shows the oil industry's profits are not only greater 
than the profits of other businesses, but they also show how the oil 
companies have not been straight with the American people.
  I also think it is timely to have this information about oil company 
profits because of the debate in both the Senate and in the other body 
about oil royalty giveaways to the oil industry. At a time of record 
prices, when oil companies are making record profits that are above 
what other industries are earning, the question is, Should the oil 
companies continue to get record subsidies from the taxpayers?
  In May, the House of Representatives held a historic vote to put an 
end to taxpayer-funded royalty giveaways to profitable oil companies. 
The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on a bipartisan basis 
to put a stop to this waste of taxpayer funds. Just a few weeks before 
that House vote, I spent nearly 5 hours trying to get a vote here in 
the Senate on exactly this issue. But despite that extended discussion, 
I was unable to get an up-or-down vote on my proposal to stop ladling 
out tens of billions of dollars of unnecessary subsidies to the oil 
sector.
  I believe the Senate ought to have an opportunity to debate and vote 
on the oil royalty issue, and it seems especially timely after the new 
report the Congressional Research Service has supplied to me. With the 
Government Accountability Office estimating that tens of billions of 
taxpayer dollars could be lost as a result of the oil royalty program, 
this issue is too important to duck.
  Over the next few weeks, as the Senate debates energy, I am hopeful 
that the Senate will think carefully about the findings of the 
independent Congressional Research Service. The Congressional Research 
Service analysis indicates to me that the oil industry in their 
advertisements and other promotions is not being straight with the 
American people. The Congressional Research Service has given us a good 
sense of where the oil sector is actually putting their money, and at a 
time when their rate of return on equity--30 percent--is certainly very 
strong and we look at where their cash reserves are--and they are 
sitting on piles of money--we are not seeing those dollars put back 
into exploration and development here in our country so we can have a 
new red, white, and blue energy policy that makes us independent from 
sources of foreign oil.
  Let's work to have a debate in the Senate based on the facts. The 
Congressional Research Service has now given us illuminating 
information about what the facts are. Let's make better use of taxpayer 
dollars than to give away tens of billions of dollars in royalties in a 
program that began when oil was $19 a barrel and now frequently is well 
over $70 a barrel. This is a time for the Senate to come together on a 
bipartisan basis to look at these issues carefully. The Congressional 
Research Service report provides an opportunity to get the facts out--
the real facts--about what is going on in this critical sector of our 
economy.
  I ask unanimous consent that the report of the Congressional Research 
Service be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                               Congressional Research Service,

                                     Washington, DC, July 5, 2006.


                               memorandum

     To: Hon. Ron Wyden.
     Subject: Oil Company Financial Data.
     From: Robert Pirog, Specialist in Energy Economics and 
         Policy, Resources, Science, and Industry Division.
       This memorandum is written in response to your request for 
     financial data for selected oil companies for the period 1999 
     to 2005. The companies for which you requested data are 
     ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Valero, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, 
     Sunoco, and Total SA. The analysis is complicated by reason 
     of mergers and acquisitions among the selected firms, 
     differences in U.S. and international accounting standards, 
     currency exchange rates, differences in the size of the 
     selected companies, and differences in the extent to which 
     the selected companies participate in all aspects of the oil 
     business. The likely effects of these factors will be noted 
     in the appropriate sections of this memorandum.
     Profit rates
       Profit rates are usually expressed as net income as a 
     percentage of a relevant base; usually revenue, shareholder 
     equity, or assets. Each profit rate provides a different 
     measure of the success of the firm. Profit relative to 
     revenue shows how well the firm translates revenue into net 
     income. Profit relative to shareholder equity shows how 
     effective the firm is in utilizing the capital invested in 
     the firm by its owners, the shareholders. Profit relative to 
     assets shows how effective the firm is in utilizing its total 
     asset base to generate net income.

[[Page S7264]]

       Table 1 shows the average return on revenue and the return 
     on equity for the eight selected oil companies. The averages 
     are simple averages; they do not assign weights to account 
     for the different sizes of the firms in the group. 
     ExxonMobil, the largest company in the group, has total 
     revenues over ten times as large as Sunoco, the smallest 
     company in the group. However, a weighted average would still 
     not account for the fact that the sample of eight companies 
     is only a fraction of the industry. For example, the Oil and 
     Gas Journal includes over 130 companies in its oil and gas 
     firms' earning report.

           TABLE 1. RATES OF RETURN FOR SELECTED OIL COMPANIES
                              [Percentages]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                   % Return    % Return
                      Year                        on revenue   on equity
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1999............................................        2.88        4.64
2000............................................        5.79       24.85
2001............................................        5.36       16.67
2002............................................        3.89        8.11
2003............................................        5.23       18.47
2004............................................        6.45       26.18
2005............................................        7.10       29.38
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Security and Exchange Commission Forms 10-K and 20-F, Company
  Financial Reports.

       Over the seven year period, the average return on revenue 
     was 5.24 percent, while the average return on equity was 
     18.32 percent. Both profit measures increased when the recent 
     increases in the price of oil began in 2003. Two of the 
     companies in the data set, Valero and Sunoco, are refiners 
     and marketers with no crude oil production. These two firms 
     were not, therefore, positioned to benefit directly from 
     increases in the price of crude oil.
     Cash reserves
       Companies might accumulate cash reserves in anticipation of 
     a major merger or acquisition, before a share re-purchase, or 
     before a capital investment expenditure. In the case of the 
     selected oil companies, these reasons might be augmented by 
     the rapid expansion of sales revenues associated with the 
     increases in the prices of crude oil and products from 2003 
     through 2005. Large investment projects take time to plan and 
     execute, and it may be that the rapidly increasing revenues 
     these firms realized could not be efficiently allocated in 
     the available time.
       Both upstream (exploration and production) and downstream 
     (refining and marketing) investments in the oil industry tend 
     to cost billions of dollars and take years to plan, complete, 
     and realize returns from. Investment decisions are based on 
     company estimates of the long-term, expected, price of oil. 
     It may not be that the current market price of oil is 
     equivalent to the companies' long-term expected price of oil. 
     If the long-term planning price of oil is significantly lower 
     than the current market price, it might appear that the 
     companies have not increased investment in capacity to a 
     degree commensurate with increased market prices.

            TABLE 2. CASH RESERVES OF SELECTED OIL COMPANIES
                        [In millions of dollars]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                 Cash
                            Year                               reserves
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1999.......................................................        9,495
2000.......................................................       27,185
2001.......................................................       23,875
2002.......................................................       20,908
2003.......................................................       24,764
2004.......................................................       41,323
2005.......................................................      57,828
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Security and Exchange Commission Forms 10-K and 20-F, Company
  Financial Reports. Note: Shell, Valero, and ConocoPhillips data could
  not be obtained for 1999. Shell data could not be obtained for 2000.

       Table 2 shows that the cash reserves of the selected oil 
     companies have more than doubled from 2001 to 2005, the 
     period of complete data. In 2005, three companies, 
     ExxonMobil, Shell, and Chevron accounted for over 87 percent 
     of the total cash reserves.
     Exploration and capital investment
       Exploration expenses are undertaken to locate and develop 
     new commercially viable deposits of crude oil and natural 
     gas. Two of the eight companies in the data set, Valero and 
     Sunoco, have no exploration expenses since they operate only 
     in the downstream portion of the industry. Since oil fields 
     deplete over time and production tends to decline, oil 
     producers must carry out a successful exploration program to 
     keep their reserve and production positions constant. 
     However, it cannot be determined from financial data which 
     exploration expenses are ``net'' in the sense of increasing 
     production and reserves, and which are ``gross'', including 
     depletion replacement. As a result, increasing exploration 
     expenses are not necessarily tied to increased production 
     capability or reserves. Most of the firms also report dry 
     hole expenses in exploration. Dry holes do not add to either 
     production capacity or reserves.
       Capital investment expenditures were drawn from the 
     companies cash flow statements. These values represent actual 
     outlays made during the year. As a result, the values for 
     capital investment reported in Table 3 represent gross 
     investment, rather than investment net of depreciation. In 
     the current economic environment, it is likely that all 
     investments, new, as, well as those that replace depreciated 
     assets, must pass a profitability test to be undertaken. As a 
     result, gross investment is likely to represent well the 
     companies investment decisions.

TABLE 3. EXPLORATION AND CAPITAL INVESTMENT EXPENDITURES OF SELECTED OIL
                                COMPANIES
                        [In millions of dollars]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                Exploration    Capital
                     Year                         expense     investment
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1999..........................................        1,794       32,835
2000..........................................        3,114       36,417
2001..........................................        3,843       52,798
2002..........................................        4,231       55,577
2003..........................................        5,018       56,558
2004..........................................        5,318       58,304
2005..........................................        4,704      68,884
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Security and Exchange Commission Forms IO-K and 20-F, Company
  Financial Reports. Note: Shell and ConocoPhillips exploration data was
  not available for 1999. ConocoPhillips capital investment data was not
  available for 1999.

     Conclusion
       The oil industry operates in a volatile, short run market 
     in which many decisions have long term implications. The 
     upstream portion of the market is increasingly controlled by 
     national oil companies, not private firms. The market is also 
     affected by political forces.
       The private oil companies have the responsibility of making 
     decisions in the best interests of their shareholders. 
     However, because their products are important to the 
     functioning of national economies, their decisions are also 
     of interest to the public. This dual responsibility must be 
     balanced by the companies.

  Mr. WYDEN. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Burr). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call 
be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________