Energy companies faced calls for a windfall tax on their profits after British Gas and Shell announced combined £9 billion profits amid rising fuel bills. Campaigners, Labour politicians and the unions said that it was "grotesque" for the companies and their shareholders to be enjoying profits on the back of surging global energy prices, while their customers suffered from record rises. The calls are likely to be taken seriously by Alistair Darling, who is under enormous pressure to deliver a tax break for poorer households.
Prices are high because there\’s less oil and gas around than people want to use, globally: thus prices rise so that supply and demand meet.
We\’d thus rather like people to be going out and looking for more oil and gas. For them to do this they have to raise money: either by using the profits they are already making or by the thought that if they find some they can make profits with which to reward those who invest in them.
So taxing away the profits will lead to less exploration and thus higher prices in the future than there would be without the tax.
At least one company is telling the truth here:
Mr Luff insisted the company needed to keep investors on side. "We are investing huge amounts of money on behalf of our customers. We have to fund that through debt and equity and we need support from both. That is how a market economy works," he said.
And at least one person is being a stupid, stupid bastard.
Tony Woodley, joint leader of the Unite union said that the profits were "grotesque".
He said: "These latest vast profits now put the case for a windfall tax on big oil companies beyond argument.
"The Government should grasp the nettle and do what it did in 1997 by taxing grotesque profits and put the proceeds into helping the millions of people struggling with their fuel bills\’.
I think we should split the country in two: one half of it run by Tony Woodley. Polly can go and live there too. They can put their thoughtful policies into action while we put up the borders so that they can’t come back.
Think Manhattan in “Escape from New York”.
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I read somewhere that part of the reason for these huge profits is that these companies were given (for free) carbon trading certificates and yet still priced into consumer bills the value of them as though they’d had to buy them on the open market. If that were true then it is (at least partly) a genuine windfall and a case could be made to claw that value back. I don’t know if this is actually correct, perhaps someone has the figures?
Kay Tie,
I think all the Labour supporters left would fit on the Isle of Wight! Sound like a plan?
Kay Tie
They could call it Scotland.
by personal knowledge Nick Luff, the FD of centrica is a top person, highly intelligent and very moral.
Very likely to tell it how it is.
Jask,
Shell turned-over $131 billion last quarter and made $12 billion, that’s 9%. How is s 9% profit margin ‘huge’?
Of that 9%, no more than a third is paid out to the owners, the rest will be re-invested on exploration, so in the layman’s definition, profit is just 3%.
It took ten minutes to find this out, Tony Woodley must a really busy man.