Climate activists have set up a mock petrol station price board displaying Shell’s billion-dollar record profit outside the energy company’s global headquarters in London.
The British company announced that its net profit surged to a record a record $39.9 billion dollars (£32.2 billion) last year, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent oil and gas prices soaring.
The post-tax figure was more than double the number of 2021, the group’s earnings statement revealed on Thursday.
Greenpeace protesters, wearing high-vis jackets, erected a mock price board outside the Shell skyscraper on Belvdere Road on the South Bank.
Under the heading ‘Payment for climate damage’, the group has left a question mark.
Campaigners said Shell is “profiteering from climate destruction” after the record profit haul.
“While Shell counts their record-breaking billions, people across the globe count the damage from the record-breaking droughts, heatwaves and floods this oil giant is fuelling,” Greenpeace senior climate justice campaigner Elena Polisano said.
The large profit at the multinational, which supplies energy to 1.4 million UK households and runs one of Britain’s biggest network of fuel forecourts, has prompted calls for an even bigger increase in the windfall tax on energy companies.
Shell said it paid 1.9 billion dollars (£1.5 billion) in windfall tax charges to the UK and EU.
Shell also announced that it will pay a further four billion dollars (£3.2 billion) to shareholders through a new share buyback programme, and will increase dividend payments by 15 percent.
Chief executive Wael Sawan said: “Our results in Q4 and across the full year demonstrate the strength of Shell’s differentiated portfolio, as well as our capacity to deliver vital energy to our customers in a volatile world.”
But the Liberal Democrats said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has failed to take action.
Leader Sir Ed Davey said: “No company should be making these kind of outrageous profits out of Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
“Rishi Sunak was warned as chancellor and now as Prime Minister that we need a proper windfall tax on companies like Shell and he has failed to take action.”
Meanwhile Labour has accused the Prime Minister of being “too weak” to stand up to oil and gas companies.
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.”
Rishi Sunak first imposed a windfall tax on oil and gas producers operating in the UK and the North Sea in May last year.
The levy was increased in the Autumn Statement from 25 per cent to 35 per cent, and extended until 2028 – three years longer than originally planned.
