The fossil fuel companies behaved like bandits during last year’s government bailout. Today, new data shows big names in the industry laid off tens of thousands of workers last year while filling their bank accounts with public money.

In one new analysis On Friday, BailoutWatch, a nonprofit watchdog group, documented the benefits fossil fuel companies received from the CARES law passed last year. The group found that nearly 80 fossil fuel companies, including some of the world’s biggest names in oil and gas, had racked up more than $ 8 billion in federal remittances. And that money didn’t seem to reach the real workers in the industry: Documents collected by BailoutWatch show that most of those same companies laid off nearly 60,000 people last year.

If you remember correctly, the oil and gas industry was in a panic last spring like fuel demand has dropped with the onset of the pandemic. Then-President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress pressed unsuccessfully for a specific bailout just for the industry, arguing that they were concerned about jobs.

“I have tasked the Energy Secretary and the Secretary of the Treasury to formulate a plan that will make funds available so that these very important businesses and jobs are secured long into the future!” Trump tweeted last April. Harold Hamm, oil mogul and Trump adviser, said the Washington Post that he was talking to the president about “how [the pandemic] could jeopardize … jobs and savings [fossil-fuel] Producing states and communities across America, from Pennsylvania to California and from Texas to North Dakota. “

While these industry-specific funds never came to fruition, the structure of some of the CARES Act changes to the tax law – which were intended by lawmakers to help money-bleeding businesses withhold taxes. workers –created some loopholes. Two in particular have ended up being a boon to the fossil fuel industry. One allowed businesses to offset tax losses from previous years and the other allowed them to claim tax credits earlier. Both have generated millions of dollars for oil companies, BailoutWatch found.

“Most of these programs were aimed at the big economy to support businesses large and small during the economic downturn,” said Chris Kuveke, analyst at BailoutWatch. “Where oil and gas benefited disproportionately was in fiscal space. Those benefits were aimed at companies that had been profitable over the past decade, but then suffered a lot since 2018. If you look at what has happened to oil since 2018, the three years have been terrible. The tax provisions allowed companies that had been profitable but suffered even before the pandemic, which is quite unique in the oil and gas industry, to benefit from massive infusions of direct capital. “

BailoutWatch analyzed what is called a Form 10-K, a tax document that the Securities and Exchange Commission asks large companies to complete each year, to compare the number of workers enrolled in late 2019 to late 2020. They then compared those figures in the total amount of rescue funds that each company had received through the tax breaks, which it had calculated in a report published last year.

The figures are quite striking. Marathon Petroleum received more than $ 2 billion in tax benefits from the CARES Act, but laid off more than 1,900 of its workers – a 9% reduction in its payroll. Documents filed with the SEC show that 880 of the laid-off workers were covered by a collective agreement – that is, they were part of a union. (The company says The Guardian he had to make “the very difficult decision” to cut positions and give health care and benefits to the redundant.) Occidental Petroleum, meanwhile, got $ 195 million in rebates, but still got laid off 2,600 people, a reduction of 18%.

According to the analysis, seven of these companies directly benefited from a specific program designed to keep workers on the payroll – while laying off workers. Houston-based oil services company US Well Services has secured a $ 10 million loan from the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program. Yet her SEC filings show she has laid off another 233 workers, a reduction of more than 25%. The company did not respond to a request for this loan. Not all companies have taken this route; an analysis of the Houston Chronicle published last year has shown that these loans have saved tens of thousands of jobs in Texas.

You might be wondering, like me, where all that money went go, if not to keep people at work? That’s a good question, and Kuveke said we could learn more as companies continue to release tax documents.

“Marathon, for example, recorded losses of $ 10 billion in 2020, so some of that money certainly went to the company to maintain the payroll of the people it kept – it employs tens of thousands. people, ”he said. “But they have also chosen to maintain other more questionable programs, such as their dividend programs for investors and executives. compensation.”

Kuveke said there are other benefits for powerful employees, such as the use of private jets and executive bonuses, that can be hidden in proxy statements that could be revealed by digging deeper. And we should dig a little deeper. It is public money. In addition, the oil companies wield enormous power over our political system, which is part of how they can take advantage of such loopholes.

“This CARES law was mainly put in place to support the economy and maintain employment, and it is very clear that the funds these companies received were not exclusively used to maintain the payroll – they were used for the benefit of officers and shareholders, ”said Kuveke. “I don’t think people would be very comfortable knowing that is what their tax dollars are used for.”

Correction 4/2/21 10:54 AM: This piece has been updated to correct a quote from Chris Kuveke, who said that oil companies have chosen to maintain executive compensation programs, not investor compensation.