Shell make £7.25 bn in 3 months

[everythingisgoingup]

And yet we are paying more for gas/electricity!

Yesterday BP announced similar increases in profits

Speechless

Absolutely f*cking disgusting. Here we are struggling to pay £1.60/£1.70+ for a litre of fuel in times of great hardship due to a cost of living increase - and they declare profits three times greater than last year.

Stop being mean.
It's only fair that these companies make £100 a second, they work really really hard for it.
I remember that every time I fill the hot water bottle up.

But Johnson says they can't have a windfall tax as the oil companies don't like that.

Johnson knows his stuff. Even better than the spokesperson of BP who categorically said a windfall tax would make no difference to future investment.
It's quite obvious really that these super companies would pull out of a potential market in a bit of pique.
He knows better than the puzzled pension experts too when they wondered how UK profits would impact the global juggernauts of industry.
We are just so lucky to have a selfless leader 🤔

This is the argument isn't it, that it's needed to invest in our future fuel security. Which makes sense if it was being put into a National non profit scheme- or am I being naive and over simplistic? I'd like to understand the full picture

In my view it's capitalist protecting capitalism.
Their only argument seems to be that someone needs to make money and ideally a handful of people make a lot of money.
I don't know if it's the socialist in me clouding the issue but it isn't that difficult.
Some things, health, housing, heating etc (basic human rights stuff) shouldn't be run with the intention to make money.
Fuel is a good example now. We could nationalise and protect the consumers and have our own fuel security but it would cost money. It would benefit everyone long term but their isn't an appetite for it. Saving on infrastructure and initial investment always costs more long term but it's become the norm for cheaper = best.

Shell moved their HQ to the UK last year to avoid paying a 15% dividend tax in the Netherlands. If BoJo now turns round and asks for a windfall tax they could just up and move somewhere else.

I agree there should be a windfall tax but this is seen as a Labour proposal, which it is, so BoJo and pals not keen on it.

There's the rub Peahen.
We'll always be held to ransom either by the mega companies or as we've seen foreign nutters if we don't do something but which gov will bite the bullet?
Who would attempt a national industry that's well run and not a bloated cash sink, the other public services are no recommendation.

The thing is, alll the profits Shell and co make don’t belong to their Senior Leaders - the CEO of Shell will do well I’m sure, but the profits are distributed as dividends, or reinvested and so it’s not as simple as simply concluding that some big fat CEO is sitting on £7bn.

It is in the economy’s interests for energy and oil and gas companies to do well, large investors include many pension funds etc, and reinvestment is also important. Old people struggling to pay their bills will benefit from their pension fund doing well.

Over the last five years energy and oil and gas companies have had a torrid time - would you have been happy to support them then and pay extra on your bills when prices were low ? Unlikely. These companies pay huge amounts of tax already, it’s hard to let companies struggle when times are tough and then tax them even more when times are better. It’s in everybody’s interest for them to do well and for the market to operate as it should without profits being capped through windfall taxes.

Goodness that is huge.

Maybe it's about more balance then. I'm not sure the standard pension credit recipient does that well out of this? Happy to be corrected.

I am not sure what the answer is, I suspect there is no one solution

It just seems a VERY large amount of money when the disparity between rich and poor is growing larger

I am not on a low income but part of the pinched middle

It feels unfair the amount of profits being made when many of the population is struggling

They are profits that belong to investors, not Shell’s management. Take renewables for example, they are really capital intensive - they take a lot of money to set up initially. They are however, making vast amounts of money currently.

Nobody would invest in renewables, and make that huge upfront investment, if they know that the government was going to snatch away profits if their project was successful.

Companies have to have certainty over returns and not be penalised at the whim of governments. Furthermore, these companies take big risks investing in innovative projects, and even maintaining pipelines and infrastructure etc.

The main benefits of companies who do well are the population as a whole, rather than CEOs who are now governed by stronger corporate governance.

The thing is, alll the profits Shell and co make don’t belong to their Senior Leaders - the CEO of Shell will do well I’m sure, but the profits are distributed as dividends, or reinvested and so it’s not as simple as simply concluding that some big fat CEO is sitting on £7bn.

yes BUT the salaries and bonuses earned by people who work for BP and Shell as oil traders are absolutely eye-watering. They are incredibly highly-paid. I reckon most people have absolutely no idea. Even after tax. The disparity between those salaries and the amount of money coming in to a household which is struggling with fuel bills is immoral. No other way to describe it.

UK fuel duty is currently 52.95p per litre for both petrol and diesel.

On top of the cost of the fuel and the fuel duty, the UK government also imposes VAT at a rate of 20%

Assuming a price of 170p per litre, the government's tax take is approximately 80p per litre.

Nobody would invest in renewables, and make that huge upfront investment, if they know that the government was going to snatch away profits if their project was successful.

Good point. It’s worth remembering as well that you need to look at the returns on capital that these companies make over the course of the whole cycle; you can’t look at one year in isolation.

Doesn't anyone feel cheated that approximately 47% of the pump price is government taxes?

shell made a $21bn loss in 2020 . Do you think the taxpayers should have subsidised them when that happened?

Blaming the oil companies is exactly what the UK Government wants people to do. It distracts from the fact that the UK government are responsible for almost 50% of the cost of road fuel.

I am not sure what the answer is,

cap the increase on fuel bills as the French government have done at 5% rather than 5 zero

Doesn't anyone feel cheated that approximately 47% of the pump price is government taxes?

no

Doesn't anyone feel cheated that approximately 47% of the pump price is government taxes?

Actually it's a lot more than 47%. But to answer your question NO ! That pays for my benefits, my pension, my police, my NHS, my army/navy/air force. my social care, my schools, my universities, my roads, my railways, my roads, my art galleries and theatres, my food (subsidies to farmers). OK....cut the fuel duty, but 'man-up' and say what services you would cut to fund that - how about closing a few hospitals ?, or what other taxes you would increase to compensate ? You can have your cake, or you can eat it - you can't have both.

Not sure why this is hard to understand. Oil is an internationally traded commidity and the fact the price has shot up is nothing to do with Shell. They’re just pumping it out and if they weren’t it’d be even more expensive. Oil is a cyclical commodity i.e it goes up and down in price alot. Only a year or so ago crude oil price was negative, which meant oil companies like Shell were actually having to pay refiners to take it off their hands and make it into petrol. Best if we all stopped using fossil fuels and converted to renewable energy.

Omg!

The size of the company and the operation is vast so working on volume big profit will follow.
thing is theses profits can turn on a sixpence and they can have vast loses .