Big Oil companies are vultures. They prey and profit from crisis, war, and human suffering.
Campaigners staged a protest outside a supermarket in Hackney during the bank holiday weekend to draw attention to the rising cost of living and oil and gas corporations' soaring profits.
The stunt by Fossil Free London involved two trolleys: one pushed by a campaigner dressed as an oil executive and filled with sacks of money; the other was filled with placards shaped like common food items.
Each placard displayed the item's current cost and the amount it has risen by over recent months. One read, "Orange juice, £1.79, up 130 per cent". Behind the trollies a banner read: "Shell profits. We pay the price."
Laughing
The protest comes as Shell's first quarter profits jumped 115 per cent, as announced this month. Food prices in Britain are set to rise by 50 per cent from the beginning of the cost of living crisis, driven by climate and energy shocks.
Robin Wells, from Fossil Free London, said: “Big Oil companies are vultures. They prey and profit from crisis, war, and human suffering. And they pilfer from and collapse the earth systems the give us life.
"For as long as the fossil fuel industry persists, humanity's very existence is threatened, and life is all the more miserable. Shell continues to profit, and we’re all paying the price. And the cost is only getting bigger.”
Stu, also from Fuel Poverty Action, added: “It is unconscionable that so many of us are going without because we can’t afford the basic energy we need for heating, eating and lighting.
"Shareholders are laughing all the way to the bank, and the government is letting them get away with it. And £500 of our energy bill already goes to profits, and that’s set to rise if politicians do nothing.
Profits
"That’s why Fuel Poverty Action is calling on the government to clamp down on energy company profiteering, and bring down our bills by passing the benefits of cheap-to-produce renewable energy back to us.”
Meanwhile, some environmental campaigners have cautiously welcomed Rachel Reeves' promise to take aim at oil and gas profits, with plans to close a tax loophole on overseas activities and raise hundreds of millions of pounds.
Reeves, the British chancellor, said she would stop firms – including oil and gas giants such as BP and Shell – from reducing their tax liabilities by using corporate structures involving foreign branches, in a speech last week outlining cost-of-living support measures for households and businesses.
Big Oil companies are vultures. They prey and profit from crisis, war, and human suffering.
She said some oil and gas groups that operate overseas through foreign branches “have structured their tax affairs in a way which ensures they pay little or no corporation tax on their UK energy trading profits”.
“Today we are putting an end to that practice,” she announced. “We expect these reforms to raise hundreds of millions of pounds a year and fund the package of measures set out today.”
Capitalise
A spokesperson from Greenpeace welcomed the move to put “cash-strapped households over polluting profiteers”. It comes after results from BP and Shell revealed massive profit hauls thanks to bumper results in their energy trading businesses because of soaring oil prices caused by the Iran war.
Shell reported underlying earnings of £5.09 billion for the first quarter – more than double the result in the previous three months and 24 per cent higher on a year ago.
It said the higher cost of crude had boosted its oil trading business, with the wider chemicals and products division seeing underlying earnings more than quadruple to £1.41 billion.
BP also reported far better than expected results, with first quarter profits more than doubling to £2.35 billion as its traders were able to capitalise on highly volatile oil prices.
Eyewatering
Rudy Schulkind, political campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said: “It is already indefensible that companies like Shell are reaping eyewatering profits off the back of the energy crisis while millions face soaring bills and growing climate chaos.
“So it’s hugely encouraging that the chancellor is siding with cash-strapped households over polluting profiteers. But the detail will matter, and we will be watching closely to ensure these commitments are delivered in full.”
BP and Shell did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) – the UK’s leading energy body – said it was “reviewing what’s been proposed”.
The UK already imposes a windfall tax on the oil and gas sector of 38 per cent when prices exceed thresholds set by the government. When combined with permanent corporate taxes, this brings the total headline tax rate on upstream oil and gas profits to 78 per cent.
This Author
Brendan Montague is an editor at The Ecologist. This article includes information from a Fossil Free London press release and copy from the Press Association.
