Irish Examiner view: Oil firms accused of 'unfettered profiteering' as families struggle

Cost of electricity and gas bills for Irish households set to rise from €1,900 to €3,300 a year

Energy companies such as BP are continuing to enjoy massive profits. Picture: PA

With wholesale energy prices skyrocketing and the combined cost of electricity and gas bills for Irish households set to increase from €1,900 a year to something closer to €3,300 annually, the bumper €59bn profits being recorded this year by the world’s top five oil companies is a hard number for consumers to swallow.

One of the ‘big five’, BP has been accused of "unfettered profiteering", after it revealed this week underlying profits of €8.37bn between April and June this year alone thanks to high oil prices. This was the company’s biggest quarterly profit in 14 years and will result in some €4.7bn being handed to shareholders in bonuses.

It is the same story with Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Total, where booming earnings will earn fortunes for shareholders, while households globally struggle with mounting energy bills. It is estimated these companies will have made combined profits of €100bn.

It is hardly surprising that people are angry on the back of these results as workers and their families struggle with energy costs, while naked exploitation of their plight is taking place at the big oil companies.

BP chief executive Bernard Looney was taken to describe his company as a “cash machine” even before Russia invaded Ukraine in February and forced oil prices ever higher.

It might be that this period will be remembered as being the most profitable in the history of the oil industry, but it will also see ‘big oil’ being feted not as an agent for global good, but as an instrument of greed and a monument to avarice.

Calls have been made on the US and British governments, who largely regulate big oil, to implement ‘windfall taxes’ on these companies. Such a move might be good for American and British taxpayers, but will do little to curb the profiteering being meted out to the rest of the world.