Big Oil - statistics & facts
Big Oil are some of the most valuable companies in the world and generated a combined revenue of 1.4 trillion U.S. dollars in 2023. Used as a media term to describe the world’s largest and most influential publicly-traded oil and natural gas producers – Big Oil generally refers to BP, Chevron, Eni, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies.
State-owned counterparts to Big Oil are oil and gas-producing heavyweights such as Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Aramco, China’s Sinopec, and Russia’s Gazprom.
Across the Atlantic, TotalEnergies, which rebranded itself in 2021 to reflect the company’s shift towards low-carbon energy production, reported a combined liquids production of 1.55 million barrels per day in 2023. Fellow Europe-based Eni was able to declare similar levels of hydrocarbon production through its upstream operations on all major continents.
Biggest employers and highest earners
ExxonMobil regularly reports the highest revenue of any Big Oil company. In its 2023 fiscal year, it generated roughly 344.6 billion U.S. dollars, which was around 30 billion more than its closest competitor Shell. Both companies are among the five leading oil and gas companies worldwide based on revenue, although they fell behind some of the above-mentioned state-owned enterprises. ExxonMobil also came out on top in terms of net income, with nearly ten percent of its revenue translating into net profits in 2023. Interestingly, it reports a far smaller workforce than most of the European Big Oil companies, with Shell and TotalEnergies employing more than 100,000 people each.Hydrocarbon production across companies
In 2023, United States-based Chevron had a daily liquids production volume of roughly 1.5 million barrels. Of this, 997,000 barrels were pumped from oilfields in the company’s home market, an increase of nearly 100 percent since 2015.Across the Atlantic, TotalEnergies, which rebranded itself in 2021 to reflect the company’s shift towards low-carbon energy production, reported a combined liquids production of 1.55 million barrels per day in 2023. Fellow Europe-based Eni was able to declare similar levels of hydrocarbon production through its upstream operations on all major continents.
