Western oilmen pumped up to a record – Business – Kommersant

The sharp rise in energy prices last year allowed leading Western oil and gas corporations to record record profits – the “big oil five” represented by the American ExxonMobil and Chevron, the British BP and Shell and the French TotalEnergies earned a total of $195 billion. Against this backdrop, human rights activists and politicians are calling authorities to impose a tax on excess profits from oil workers, using the funds from it to support low-income segments of the population suffering from rising prices.

Today on the results of its activities for the fourth quarter and all of 2022 reported French oil and gas company TotalEnergies. At the end of the year, it doubled its profits and received a record $36.2 billion for itself. ExxonMobil And Chevronbritish BP And Shell.

The total annual profit of the “big oil five” amounted to a record $195 billion.

In their reports, Western companies attributed the sharp increase in performance to the rise in energy prices, which was caused by an increase in geopolitical instability, including the military conflict in Ukraine and tense relations between China and Taiwan. The growth in revenue for Western companies was also enough to cover the write-offs associated with the withdrawal from Russia or the curtailment of a number of projects in this country.

Record profits by oil and gas corporations have already made a number of observers supposethat the authorities of the countries in which these companies operate can go for the introduction or increase in income from the windfall tax of oil companies. To this, for example, already urged the other day the head of the international human rights organization Agnes Callamard.

“The billions in profits that these corporations receive should be subjected to adequate taxation so that the authorities put the proceeds to support the segments of the population that have been most affected by the rise in prices,” Ms. Callamard believes.

Last year the British government introduced tax on windfall profits of their oil and gas companies. The cabinet of then Prime Minister Boris Johnson received £5bn ($6.3bn) from the 25% tax – the funds were put into social transfers in the amount of £650 ($786) to 8m low-income British families. This year, the opposition Labor Party called on the government to increase the windfall tax on oil and gas corporations, but Treasury Secretary Jeremy Hunt declaredthat does not intend to raise it. “Anything that will be more (the current excess income tax.— “b”), will slow down investment, increase dependence on Putin and raise energy prices,” the minister said yesterday, speaking in the British Parliament. “We will behave responsibly.”

The human rights organization Global Witness also demanded a tax on the windfall profits of American oil and gas corporations. “A tax on excess profits from the sale of oil and gas is needed now more than ever to use the proceeds from it to support those people who are most affected by rising energy prices, and many economies are at risk of falling into recession” ,— noted organization representative Jonathan Noronha-Gant.

At the same time, some oil corporations are already trying to avoid such taxes. In December, the German and Dutch divisions of ExxonMobil filed claim to the European Court of General Jurisdiction in Luxembourg. Exxon is demanding the abolition of the EU tax on excess profits of oil and gas corporations, on the introduction of which the EU authorities agreed in September. The tax took effect on December 31 and amounts to 33% of all profits of such companies in 2022-2023, which is 20% or more higher than their average profit in the period from 2018 to 2021. As conceived by the EU authorities, the new tax in the face of rising energy prices should help reduce electricity bills for ordinary households. ExxonMobil’s case against the EU could take all of 2023.

Evgeniy Khvostik