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Energy giant BP said Tuesday that it earned nearly $2.6 billion in the second quarter, almost half what it posted in the first three months of the year as oil and natural gas prices that surged after Russia's invasion of Ukraine have fallen.
The company's underlying replacement cost profit, which excludes one-time items and fluctuations in the value of inventories, was down nearly 70 per cent from the April-to-June period a year ago, when London-based BP brought in $8.45 billion.
It's the latest oil and gas major to see profits fall from record highs last year, following British rival Shell, France's TotalEnergies and U.S.-based ExxonMobil. Energy prices spiked after Russia launched its war in Ukraine, raising fears about Moscow's supplies of oil and natural gas before it cut off most of its gas heading to Europe.
Energy costs were a major driver of inflation around the world, stirring outcry as households and businesses faced skyrocketing electricity and heating bills while energy companies' profits skyrocketed. The U.K. has passed taxes on such windfall profits.
Now, those outsized earnings are drawing back down.
“Another quarter of performing while transforming,” CEO Bernard Looney said in a statement. “Our underlying performance was resilient with good cash delivery — during a period of significant turnaround activity and weaker margins in our refining business.”
Despite the hurdles, BP said it's increasing its quarterly dividend by 10 per cent and plans to buy back an additional $1.5 billion in stock from shareholders.
BP, which saw its earnings last year double to a record high $27.7 billion, said it was awarded rights to develop two offshore wind projects in Germany — its first in continental Europe. It also noted progress in hydrogen projects.
Energy companies are facing increasing pressure to do more to reduce such emissions that cause climate change. But fossil fuels have remained an important part of the mix. BP says two new oil and gas projects have launched in the second quarter.
Britain also said Monday that it will grant hundreds of new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea in a bid for energy independence despite pushback from climate activists.
Comments
The big takeaway from this article, for me, is the acknowledged connection between rises in oil prices and the war in Ukraine. The spin off from that cash bonanza seems to be our current fixation on inflation and the high price of living. The war itself has receded to a by line on the nightly news....a kind of stunned silence exists in the western media as a conflict most of us cheered drags on indefinitely..........and western military stocks continue to be depleted.
Bodes well for the future of weapons manufacturing does it not??? And fossil fuels benefit hugely, not only from war but from the paranoid preparations for future dustups.
Perhaps its time to connect the military spending with the fossil fuel digging and start the conversation on how a sustainable world, going forward, has to be a world without War???? Even to begin the conversation on how many carbon capture and storage facilities we'd have to build to make up for all the greenhouse gases being released in Ukraine currently, would be progress. If we have the time and patience to factor in the emissions we're going to produce rebuilding all those bombed out apartment complexes and damaged infrastructures in Ukraine....it should become more than a little apparent.
The planet cannot afford War any longer.....War dances cheek to jowl with Big Fossil Fuel production....producing ever more emissions. War is a boon to re-developers perhaps,a gold rush for weapons manufacturers, a gift that keeps on giving for Fossil fuels, but for the planet going forward.... war is a planet killer.
Only Fossil fools imagine it can continue.
I hope BP starves to death. I've never forgotten the deep-sea blow-out off the East Coast of the USA, how BP COULD have prevented it, and didn't, how they could have changed their behaviours, and didn't. And all the consequences to ALL the beings, human and otherwise, affected by that mass poisoning.
Die. You're only a company. People, and the planet, are FAR more important.