ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and TotalEnergies. The quartet of these companies, which dominate the global oil and gas market, earned a combined profit of almost 51 billion dollars (1.2 trillion crowns) in the second quarter of this year. That’s nearly double what they earned a year ago, Reuters reported.
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Consumers and some politicians accuse the company of taking advantage of the current situation with a lack of supplies and thus deliberately increasing their profits. However, these could be subject to a special tax in some countries.
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For example, this has already happened in Great Britain – the government there introduced an extraordinary 25 percent tax on windfall profits for oil and gas companies.
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Shell
The British energy company, which extracts, processes and distributes both oil and natural gas, doubled its profit year-on-year in the second quarter to a record 11.47 billion dollars (276.1 billion crowns). The previous record, roughly $2.3 billion lower, was set just three months earlier.
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The company owes its high profits to high oil prices and the margins of refineries and gas trading, whose price in Europe is breaking records due to the war in Ukraine and limited supplies from Russia.
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BP
Another British giant in the oil and gas field, British Petroleum (BP), also posted a fat profit for the second quarter, namely 8.45 billion dollars (203.5 billion crowns), which is the highest value in the last 14 years and the second highest in company history. Compared to last year’s second quarter, this is an increase of more than 5.5 billion dollars.
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Even with BP, the reasons for the huge increase are the same as with Shell. At the same time, analysts in a poll by the Reuters agency estimated that in the second quarter of this year BP’s net profit will reach “only” 6.8 billion dollars (163.4 billion crowns).
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TotalEnergies
This French company also did well, posting a profit of 9.1 billion dollars (218.6 billion crowns) in the second quarter. This is almost three times more year-on-year.
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ExxonMobil
“Exxon made more money than God this year,” said US President Joe Biden last month, criticizing energy companies for their fat profits during a speech in Los Angeles.
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The profit of Exxon, which is the leading miner of oil and natural gas in the USA, reached 17.9 billion dollars (430 billion crowns) in the second quarter and almost quadrupled year-on-year. The company benefited from the increased demand for energy, the price of which rose sharply.
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Chevron
The second American oil giant more than tripled its profit year-on-year to 11.6 billion dollars (almost 279 billion crowns). This is a company record. The company, like ExxonMobil, operates in the field of oil and gas extraction, but also deals with geothermal energy.
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MOL
The Hungarian oil and gas company, which also operates in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, increased its profit in the second quarter by 40 percent year-on-year to 249.5 billion forints (15.5 billion crowns).
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As in the previous cases, the significant improvement in the economy is due to higher oil and gas prices as well as sharply higher margins of refineries, despite the fact that the Hungarian government has introduced a price ceiling for fuel.
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