Energy giants' profits amount to hundreds of billions of dollars
The world's largest oil companies have made a profit of $281 billion since the start of the armed conflict in Ukraine in February of the year before. A Global Witness study says five Western «supergiants» have become the main beneficiaries of the Ukrainian conflict, while many Westerners struggle to heat their homes.
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The world's five largest publicly traded oil companies have made profits of more than a quarter of a trillion dollars since then how the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine led to a sharp rise in energy prices and household bills, writes The Guardian.
According to Global Witness, the “supermajors” — BP, Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil and TotalEnergies — earned 281 billion dollars since the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis in February 2022.
UK-based BP and Shell have made a combined profit of $94.2 billion since the conflict in Ukraine began. Global Witness estimates that this is enough to pay all UK households' energy bills for 17 months straight.
Shell, which has made a profit of $58.9 billion since the second quarter of 2022, is also in the process of cutting up to 330 staff from its low-carbon solutions division, refocusing this year on high-return oil projects.
BP, which last year also decided to cut its climate targets, has made a profit of $35 billion since the conflict began.
The largest European and American companies — Chevron, ExxonMobil and TotalEnergies — have made a combined profit of more than $187 billion.
Patrick Gailey, senior fossil fuel researcher at Global Witness, says the analysis shows that no matter what happens on the front lines, major fossil fuel producers are the main beneficiaries of the conflict in Ukraine.
International shipping profits and Food suppliers have also risen sharply over the past two years, prompting some economists to call for targeted price controls during the emergency, The Guardian notes.
Last summer, Shell made a U-turn, pledging to cut oil production annually by the end of the decade as part of a strategic transition away from fossil fuels and to “reward our shareholders now and into the distant future.”
The top five companies are forecast to reward investors. record payouts of more than $100 billion in 2023, when data for the full fiscal year is released in the coming weeks, despite growing public outrage and criticism of the fossil fuel profit mechanism.
The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) said companies are likely to pay out even more to shareholders this year despite lower prices in commodity markets, leading to lower profits.
According to IEEFA, oil majors enriched shareholders with $104 billion in dividends and share buybacks in 2022.
“Now they are spending their income on handouts to investors and more and more oil and gas production, which Europe does not even need, and the climate cannot withstand,” says Patrick Gailey. “This is yet another way the fossil fuel industry is failing consumers and the planet.”
Last year was the hottest on record by a wide margin, causing heat waves, floods and wildfires that cost lives and livelihoods. existence around the world, reminds The Guardian.
The analysis found that some extreme weather events, such as heat waves in Europe and the United States, would be virtually impossible without human-caused global warming.
Isabella Weber, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, charted the growth corporate profits in the food, shipping and oil and gas sectors.
Earlier this month she told members of the European Parliament that targeted price controls were needed to prevent firms from using the crisis to boost profits and shareholder dividends at the expense of customers: “Energy The crisis was the worst time for most Europeans, but the best time for energy companies. When emergencies mean record profits in critical sectors, government and corporate interests are at odds. We need a new emergency economics textbook. This raises the question of whether we can entrust systemically important sectors solely to these private corporations who found out about it… in the midst of a huge shock… Europe has experienced in recent history that they have made the largest profits in their entire history.”