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Shell records highest profit in 115 year history - as consumer suffer

ended 02. February 2023

Shell this morning announced its highest profit in 115 years of operating, as it benefited from soaring energy prices. Profits hit £32.2bn in 2022, double that of the previous year. You can read the BBC article about it >>here<<. Meanwhile, people and businesses around the UK are being squeezed like never before. Shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband said: “As the British people face an energy price hike of 40% in April, the Government is letting the fossil fuel companies making bumper profits off the hook with their refusal to implement a proper windfall tax.” Meanwhile, Greenpeace accused Shell of “profiteering from climate destruction” after the record profit announcement. What are your thoughts? We will be issuing them to the local and national media this AM.

5 responses from the Newspage community

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Editor
Mike Staton
Director at Staton Mortgages
In a time when every UK citizen is being squeezed dry of every penny they have worked hard for, this stinks. This just goes to show how spineless a nation we have become. How can a government, whose main priority is to look after the well-being of its citizens, allow this to happen? Winston Churchill will be turning over in his grave. RIP United Kingdom.
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Samuel Mather-Holgate
Independent Financial Adviser at Mather and Murray Financial
It’s a dilemma for the government, but there is an overriding principle for the government of not penalising profits. No one was going to stand in to bail out energy companies when the oil price went negative during covid, so when the commodity rises you would expect them to be able to retain their profits.
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Craig Bunting
Co-founder at BEAR
Hospitality businesses like ours are balancing soaring energy costs against price sensitively due to the equally soaring energy costs that our guests are dealing with. This record profits haul is not a mark in history that should be celebrated, and the government have a duty of care to end this. We continue to fight and invest in the brand that only yesterday we celebrated seven years of trade. Sadly, I see friends and like-minded business owners in towns and cities near us simply giving up. Great businesses are being destroyed due to terrible Government leadership when it is needed most.
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Graham Cox
Director at Bridging Hub
Shell's record profit gives the lie to their claim that the windfall tax would deter investment. It also reveals the iniquity of ordinary people being asked to continue paying sky-high energy prices. Where's the fairness in any of this?
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Rhys Schofield
Brand Director at Peak Mortgages and Protection
It's perverse that at a time where millions have to decide to heat or eat the government is complicit in making it worse by not implementing a proper windfall tax that could be used to make regular people's lives easier or invest in green energy. Such a move would be massively popular and you have to ask yourselves why the government seems so reluctant to do so and in whose pockets are they this time round?