Speaking late last month, U.S. President Joe Biden threatened to pursue higher taxes on oil company profits if industry giants do not work to cut gas prices.
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Oxfam on Monday filed shareholder resolutions against U.S. oil giants Exxon Mobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips, saying a lack of transparency over their global tax practices poses a material risk for long-term investors.
The international relief charity said the companies’ tax practices undermine the public’s interest in a fair tax system — especially in Global South countries “with the greatest tax revenue needs.”
“Exxon, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips’s threadbare tax disclosures leave investors, watchdog groups, and the general public in the dark about the companies’ secretive tax practices,” Daniel Mulé, policy lead on extractive industries and tax at Oxfam America, said in a statement.
Chevron, Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips were not immediately available to comment when contacted by CNBC.
It comes amid a broader push for greater tax transparency from large corporations, particularly as people around the world feel the squeeze of a cost-of-living crisis.
Oil majors have been repeatedly criticized for their global tax operations. And, in recent months, energy giants have faced growing calls for a windfall tax after raking in record-breaking profits thanks to a surge in the price of oil and gas following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
If oil and gas projects are alleviating poverty, why hide the numbers?
Daniel Mulé
Policy lead on extractive industries and tax at Oxfam America
Speaking late last month, U.S. President Joe Biden threatened to pursue higher taxes on oil company profits if industry giants do not work to cut gas prices, accusing energy giants of “war profiteering.”
“Oil companies’ record profits today are not because they’re doing something new or innovative,” Biden said on Oct. 31. “Their profits are a windfall of war — the windfall from the brutal conflict that’s ravaging Ukraine and hurting tens of millions of people around the globe.”
Together, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips reported third-quarter profits in excess of $35 billion.
“Oil and gas companies frequently point to their contributions to the tax base in producer countries as a justification for their continued operations, particularly in poor countries, but secretive tax practices make it impossible to verify whether the companies actually contribute to shared prosperity,” Oxfam America’s Mulé said.
“If oil and gas projects are alleviating poverty, why hide the numbers?” he added.
‘Let the sunlight in’
Oxfam said the tax practices of Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips create a risk for investors who want to safeguard against potential reputational damage and the possibility of “shelling out millions due to lawsuits, blocked projects, and renegotiation of fiscal terms.”
To rectify this, Oxfam called on the companies to publish reports detailing their tax practices in line with the tax standard of the Global Reporting Initiative, which includes public country-by-country reporting of financial, tax and worker information.
A report from the Tax Justice Network published earlier this month showed that public country-by-country reporting could reduce tax revenue losses due to cross-border profit shifting by at least $89 billion.
Oxfam says the oil and gas sector is recognized as a particularly high-risk sector for corporate tax avoidance — and reaffirms the point that the burning of fossil fuels is the chief driver of the climate emergency.
Chevron last month reported its second-highest quarterly profit ever.
“US extractive companies Hess and Newmont publish GRI-aligned tax reports, as do international oil companies including Shell, BP, and Total,” said Ian Gary, director of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition, an international transparency advocacy group.
“Exxon, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips are seriously lagging behind their peers,” Gary said.
The resolutions were expected to be put to shareholders at Exxon Mobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips at their annual general meetings in May next year.
“Shareholders need a full understanding of potential risks,” said Jason Ward, principal analyst at the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research.
“Corporations should respect shareholders and lead the way to let the sunlight in,” he added.
In a joint statement, French and German economists have called on governments to adopt “a common approach” to decarbonize European trucking fleets – and they’re calling for a focus on fully electric trucks, not hydrogen.
France and Germany are the two largest economies in the EU, and they share similar challenges when it comes to freight decarbonization. The two countries also share a border, and the traffic between the two nations generates major cross-border flows that create common externalities between the two countries.
And for once, it seems like rail isn’t a viable option:
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While rail remains competitive mainly for heavy, homogeneous goods over long distances. Most freight in Europe is indeed transported over distances of less than 200 km and involves consignment weights of up to 30 tonnes (GCEE, 2024) In most such cases, transportation by rail instead of truck is not possible or not competitive. Moreover, taking into account the goods currently transported in intermodal transport units over distances of more than 300 km, the modal shift potential from road to rail would be only 6% in Germany and less than 2% in France.
That leaves trucks – and, while numerous government incentives currently exist to promote the parallel development of both hydrogen and battery electric vehicle infrastructures, the study is clear in picking a winner.
“Policies should focus on battery-electric trucks (BET) as these represent the most mature and market-ready technology for road freight transport,” reads the the FGCEE statement. “Hence, to ramp-up usage of BET public funding should be used to accelerate the roll-out of fast-charging networks along major corridors and in private depots.”
The appeal was signed by the co-chair of the advisory body on the German side is the chairwoman of the German Council of Economic Experts, Monika Schnitzer. Camille Landais co-chairs the French side. On the German side, the appeal was signed by four of the five experts; Nuremberg-based energy economist Veronika Grimm (who also sits on the National Hydrogen Council, which is committed to promoting H2 trucks and filling stations) did not sign.
With companies like Volvo and Renault and now Mercedes racking up millions of miles on their respective battery electric semi truck fleets, it’s no longer even close. EV is the way.
On today’s tariff-tastic episode of Quick Charge, we’ve got tariffs! Big ones, small ones, crazy ones, and fake ones – but whether or not you agree with the Trump tariffs coming into effect tomorrow, one thing is absolutely certain: they are going to change the price you pay for your next car … and that price won’t be going down!
Everyone’s got questions about what these tariffs are going to mean for their next car buying experience, but this is a bigger question, since nearly every industry in the US uses cars and trucks to move their people and products – and when their costs go up, so do yours.
New episodes of Quick Charge are recorded, usually, Monday through Thursday (and sometimes Sunday). We’ll be posting bonus audio content from time to time as well, so be sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute of Electrek’s high-voltage daily news.
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GE Vernova has produced over half the turbines needed for SunZia Wind, which will be the largest wind farm in the Western Hemisphere when it comes online in 2026.
GE Vernova has manufactured enough turbines at its Pensacola, Florida, factory to supply over 1.2 gigawatts (GW) of the turbines needed for the $5 billion, 2.4 GW SunZia Wind, a project milestone. The wind farm will be sited in Lincoln, Torrance, and San Miguel counties in New Mexico.
At a ribbon-cutting event for Pensacola’s new customer experience center, GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik noted that since 2023, the company has invested around $70 million in the Pensacola factory.
The Pensacola investments are part of the announcement GE Vernova made in January that it will invest nearly $600 million in its US factories and facilities over the next two years to help meet the surging electricity demands globally. GE Vernova says it’s expecting its investments to create more than 1,500 new US jobs.
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Vic Abate, CEO of GE Vernova Wind, said, “Our dedicated employees in Pensacola are working to address increasing energy demands for the US. The workhorse turbines manufactured at this world-class factory are engineered for reliability and scalability, ensuring our customers can meet growing energy demand.”
SunZia Wind and Transmission will create US history’s largest clean energy infrastructure project.
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