Earlier this year I wrote a Twitter thread explaining why the profits of energy companies would rise dramatically this year as a result of the fuel price increases resulting from the Ukraine war.
The reality is that the profits have not increased by as much as I predicted. I have a very strong feeling that energy companies will at this moment be booking every loss that they can find within their companies in a desperate attempt to disguise the scale to which they are benefitting as a result of war and the exploitation of people around the world. But still we get this:
There is blatant profiteering going on here. War is being exploited and as a consequence people will die. In the meantime shareholders will laugh all the way to the bank, investment in fossil fuels will rise and the planet will burn.
What to do? I thought a tax would help. I still think it might. But the rate has to be close to 100%. This is what wartime situations demand when exploitation happens. Just read Keynes on the issue, writing in WW2.
The alternative is price capping. The government has to impose price limits. And if the energy companies withdraw fuel from the UK market as a result it will be clear who is causing this.
But what we are seeing now is blatant commercial exploitation of people as a result of which millions will be faced with the choice between food, heat and keeping their homes this winter. The time was always going to come when it would become apparent that capitalism just does not care: that time is now.
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Typo (you may wish to correct): “… choice between hood, heat…”
Thanks. Corrected.
I think we should all take a moment to congratulate BP for all the hard work they’ve done to achieve such huge profits.
Seldom do global conglomerates achieve such an abuse of position & power and they spin it all as a positive thing.
Companies need to turn a profit to be competitive but they are profiteering, during WWII this kind of activity was a crime.
That money should be being used to support lower prices across the board and particularly for the lower income families.
Brings a tear to the eye, for all the wrong reasons.
Potential for some direct action here: https://dontpay.uk
Or here: https://www.weallwanttojuststopoil.com
I suspect many will take part
The private banking sector gets billions to play with in the central bank reserve account and we get very little in comparison to protect us from the price gouging going on for fuel
And all of this is a product NOT of an Orwellian 1984 world but a Neo-liberal, Thatcherite one.
It is the Right that has gone bonkers – not the Left. Yet the narrative has always been that it will be socialism that will enslave us.
Too few seem to have woken up to this.
Given that the financial cost of invading Ukraine will be huge for Russia, I would have thought that Russia has a need to find new customers for its gas roughly equal to the need of Europe to find new suppliers.
The worldwide supply and demand for gas is the same as it was pre-pandemic so surely in what is a non-complex commodity market, after a short game of musical chairs, new supply chains should be established and we should be back to square one.
So quite why we are now being told that in 2023 gas prices are likely to be at 3-4 times their pre-pandemic levels is inexplicable.
Or is this another of those situations when we see that not only are markets not the answer to all humanities problems as claimed by the Tories, but are actually not capable of solving anything.
Here’s a thought: The increase in prices by the oil industry is nothing more than a ploy to recoup the losses incurred during the lockdown years, when the entire world cut back on its use of oil, causing prices to fall dramatically and thus oil company profits to fall too. At the same, due to furloughing and working from home, people were able to actually save money. Now the oil companies (and other industries) view those cash stockpiles as deferred income, to be claimed in due course via price hikes (justified through tenuous arguments). Never mind the effect on inflation and the regressive nature of said price hikes.