Exxon Mobil

RANK6

Exxon Mobil bounced back from a rocky, pandemic-disrupted 2020, leaping from 10th to sixth place on the Fortune 500. After COVID-related restrictions caused energy demand and oil and gas prices to plummet, Exxon Mobil took to cost-cutting to perk up its balance sheet, reducing its employee headcount by 9,000. Those efforts, along with a rebound in oil prices, helped position the company to achieve its biggest annual profit in seven years in 2021, as it earned more than $23 billion. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Exxon Mobil exited its Sakhalin-1 oil development in Russia, joining fellow energy giants like BP and Shell in divesting from that country, and announced that it would take a write-down of up to $4 billion. Having long taken heat for its contribution to climate change, Exxon Mobil has created a new company, Exxon Mobil Low Carbon Solutions, to commercialize technologies that could be used to achieve net-zero emissions.