Oil giant BP has been slammed for handing its fat cat boss a £10million pay and perks bonanza.
Critics called the windfall for Bernard Looney a “kick the teeth” for households struggling with sky-high energy bills.
His £10million package is 300 times the average UK worker’s pay, and equal to the annual gas and electricity bills of 4,000 households.
Mr Looney was rewarded as BP’s profits doubled to £23.4billion last year.
BP is among industry giants to have benefitted from a surge in wholesale energy prices in the wake of Russia ’s invasion of Ukraine.
Mr Looney’s total pay packet was double the £4.5million he got in 2021, BP’s annual report revealed.
On top of a near £1.4million salary, he also netted an almost £2.4million annual bonus and £6million from a longer-term reward scheme.
Murray Auchincloss, BP’s finance boss, got a package worth nearly £5.3million.
Jonathan Noronha-Gant, senior fossil fuels campaigner at the group Global Witness, said: “People everywhere struggling to feed their families or warm their homes in the harsh winter months have every right to be angry that the CEO of a huge energy firm is netting millions of pounds in pay.
“This enormous pay package is a kick in the teeth to all hardworking people being faced with a cost-of-living crisis.”
He added: “Nothing could be a starker example of the gross inequality that sits at the very heart of our broken energy system.”
Mr Looney’s package emerged a day after rival Shell’s annual report showed its former boss, Ben van Beurden, also picked-up almost £10million in pay and perks.
Mel Evans, Greenpeace UK’s head of UK climate, said: “As families open their energy bills this month, consumed with worry about how they will make ends meet, enormous payouts are dished out to energy bosses.
“It’s fundamentally wrong that energy companies are profiting from a war overseas, whilst at the same time increasing wealth inequality in the UK.”
Lib Dem leader Ed Davey said: “It is obscene that Rishi Sunak is happy for energy bosses to rake in millions of pounds in bonuses, while refusing to help families struggling to heat their homes.
“This Conservative government is just totally out of touch.
“It’s time that the eye-watering profits made from Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine were properly taxed and used to help reduce people’s bills.”
BP said its pay-setting committee had used its discretion to reduce Mr Looney’s bonuses by around £764,000.
Paula Rosput Reynolds, chair of the committee, said: “The three years in which Bernard has been our CEO have been among the most challenging in BP’s recent history.
“It took great resilience to introduce our new strategy and extraordinary focus on operations to ensure that the company performed through a pandemic and beyond.
“The vast majority of his remuneration is linked to performance over the three year period.
“During that time almost all the metrics that we set forth - and which were endorsed by shareholders - have been met.”
