"The CEO of Exxon makes more than 11,000 US dollars per hour, while a minimum wage worker pumping gas at an Exxon station makes less than 11,000 US dollars a year," Senator Sherrod Brown charged at a press conference backed by other Democratic lawmakers. Brown lambasted US government tax subsidies benefiting the oil sector and "windfall profits," as he called for a new national energy policy. ExxonMobil garnered about six billion US dollars of profits from "upstream" operations, which include oil and gas exploration and production. That was down slightly from 6.4 billion US dollars in the first quarter of 2006. "In the first quarter, ExxonMobil continued to actively invest, bringing additional crude oil, finished products and natural gas to market," said ExxonMobil's chairman Rex Tillerson. The drop in upstream income, however, was offset by improved "downstream" refining and marketing operations, which generated a higher profit of 1.9 billion US dollars.