US oil behemoths ExxonMobil and Chevron announced yet another quarter of astronomical earnings on Friday, as both businesses kept making hefty cash dividend payments to shareholders.

Strong refining performance helped ExxonMobil return $8.1 billion to shareholders and Chevron $6.6 billion in dividends and share repurchases, offsetting the impact of lower oil prices in the first quarter compared to the previous year’s period.

“We’re delivering strong financial results and increasing cash return to shareholders,” citing a 65 % increase in shareholder repayments from the same time last year said Mike Wirth, Chevron Executive, quoted by The Observer.

The outcomes prolonged a prosperous period for the US oil companies following the upheaval caused by the Russo-Ukranian conflict on the world energy market. Both businesses cited a setback from recent windfall profit taxes that prevented them from realizing even greater profits. 

The most recent period saw crude prices fluctuate about $70 per barrel for the majority of the quarter. Although that is a decrease from the peak in the years following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, crude oil prices are still quite high.

Profits at ExxonMobil more than doubled to $11.4 billion in the first quarter despite a 4.3 % drop in revenues to $86.6 billion.

ExxonMobil’s $3.4 billion in one-time expenses related to its departure from the Sakhalin offshore oilfield after the invasion of Ukraine hurt results in the prior quarter.

However, despite a 23 percent decline in crude prices from the same quarter in 2022, oil and natural gas production increased by 4.1 percent.

The oil giant benefited from decreased oil prices in ExxonMobil’s energy products segment thanks to its integrated approach, making it an end user of oil at its network of refineries for petroleum.

The corporation is “growing value by increasing production from our favored assets to meet global demand,” said Darren Woods, the company’s Chief Executive to the CNBC media network.

Woods characterized the state of the market as “fairly mixed,” pointing out in an interview with CNBC that the sector is recovering from a historically moderate time in terms of demand. 

The degree to which demand increases in China when its economy reopens will be crucial will be a crucial topic.  There are “not many knobs to pull on production” in a “tight” market, Woods told the network.