Oil giants have been criticized for preparing to announce an “obscene” £160 billion profit bonanza as households continue to struggle to make ends meet, a news report claims. According to the report, the top five producers in the world will reveal in the next two weeks how much they brought in last year.
According to expert predictions, the annual migration will double due to sky-high energy prices that will put households and businesses in trouble.
Predicted combined profits for BP, Shell, along with US heavyweights Chevron and ExxonMobil, and France’s TotalEnergies would amount to more than £5,000 per second.
Alice Harrison, of the group Global Witness, told The Mirror: “In the midst of an acute energy crisis that has pushed more than seven million UK households into fuel poverty, the largest Western oil companies are expected to post staggering annual profits of around £160bn.
Let’s not forget that these companies are richer because the rest of us are poorer.
“Britons should ask whose side their government is on? Those of us living in cold, drafty homes or an industry riding the wave of the energy crisis and returning billions to its shareholders.”
“If the profits of these companies were properly taxed, our government could release much-needed money to rebuild this country – from giving the British adequate and long-term support for the cost of their energy bills, to giving of NHS nurses on the picket lines. the pay raises they deserve.”
Tessa Khan, executive director of fellow campaign group Uplift. said: “These are profits that the oil and gas industry is taking away from us in higher energy and fuel bills: from pensioners, families with children, UK companies.
“They’re making a profit while British people are struggling. It’s obscene.”
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The oil companies also state that the profits are now comparable to the heavy losses at the beginning of the Covid crisis.
Susannah Streeter, senior investment and market analyst at broker Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “Oil prices are hovering around $86 a barrel, well below the peaks above $120 last summer.
“However, energy prices are still historically high and so these are still favorable times.”