Chevron Corp. joined the parade of oil companies reporting king-size profits Friday, announcing that high crude prices helped boost first-quarter earnings 49% to $4 billion.
The company's results came on the heels of a series of stunning profit reports from giant Exxon Mobil Corp. and as critics from California to Washington ratcheted up accusations that the oil companies were piling up cash at the expense of consumers who were paying more than $3 for a gallon of gasoline.
Together, the nation's top three oil companies -- Exxon Mobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips -- reported profit of $15.7 billion in the first quarter, a nearly 17% increase from the year-earlier quarter.
The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights on Friday accused Chevron of profiteering. The company's latest financial report is "proof that retail gasoline prices are rising far faster than the cost of production, despite all the oil company excuses about the price of crude oil," the Santa Monica consumer activist group said.
Chevron on Friday barely acknowledged the furor surrounding industry profits. Chief Executive Dave O'Reilly said in a statement that the San Ramon, Calif., company "is in an excellent position to continue adding value for our stockholders and helping to satisfy the energy needs of the world economies." A Chevron spokesman didn't return a call seeking comment on the price-gouging accusations.
The American Petroleum Institute, a trade group, has said that oil prices are being driven up by a tight worldwide supply of oil and that gasoline prices reflect U.S. market conditions.
Chevron's first-quarter net income was equal to $1.80 a share, up from $2.7 billion, or $1.28 a share. The results, which included big increases in profits from oil extraction and refining, surpassed Wall Street expectations of $1.78 a share, according to Thomson Financial.
Revenue for the quarter totaled $54 billion, up 32% from $42 billion a year earlier. Chevron increased its capital expenditures for exploration and refining projects by 80% to $3 billion in the first period.
"It was a pretty vanilla quarter," said Mark Gilman, an oil analyst at independent researcher Benchmark Co. But because Chevron's earnings have fallen short of analysts' expectations in four of the last six quarters, Gilman said, "something that's plain vanilla is kind of a backward plus."
