Oil giants have been slammed for preparing to announce an "obscene" £160billion profit bonanza when households are battling to make ends meet.
Five of the world’s biggest producers will over the next fortnight reveal just how much they raked in last year.
Analysts predict the annual haul will have doubled, on the back of sky-high energy prices that are causing misery for households and businesses.
The forecast combined profits for BP, Shell, along with US heavyweights Chevron and ExxonMobil, and France’s TotalEnergies would equate to more than £5,000 a second.
US heavyweight Chevron kicked the reporting season off yesterday by announcing record annual profits of £28.6billion, a big rise the £12.6billion it made in 2021.
Mike Wirth, Chevron’s chairman and chief executive, insisted it was "investing to grow both traditional and new energy supplies to meet increasing demand for affordable, reliable, and ever-cleaner energy."
Rival US goliath ExxonMobil is predicted to announce profits of around £47.2billion on Tuesday.
Attention then switches across the Atlantic on Thursday with Shell forecast to have made about £31billion.
The following weeks is expected to see BP reveal it made around £22.4billon, and French giant TotalEnergies £29billion.
Alice Harrison, from the group Global Witness, said: "In the midst of an acute energy affordability crisis that has forced over seven million UK homes into fuel poverty, the largest Western oil majors are anticipated to record staggering yearly profits of around £160billion."
"Let’s not forget that these companies are richer because the rest of us are poorer.
"Brits should be asking themselves whose side their government is on? Those of us living in cold, draughty homes or an industry that’s riding the wave of the energy crisis and returning billions to its shareholders."
"If the profits of these companies were properly taxed, our government could free up money that’s desperately needed to rebuild this country – from giving Brits adequate and long-term support with the cost of their energy bills, to giving NHS nurses on the picket lines the pay raises they deserve."
Tessa Khan, executive director of fellow campaign group Uplift. said: "These are profits that the oil and gas industry is taking from us in higher energy and fuel bills: from pensioners, families with children, UK businesses.
"They are profiteering while British people are struggling. It’s obscene."
Under pressure, the Government announced an increased windfall tax on North Sea producers last year.
Shell has already said it expects to pay around £1.7billion in such taxes for the final three months of last year.
Yet it came after bosses at the London-listed multinational said in October it had not paid any UK windfall taxes due to heavy investment in the North Sea.
Last year’s profits could make something of a high point, as wholesale gas prices have fallen sharply in recent months and oil prices are some way their previous peaks.
The oil companies also argue that profits now compare wit heavy losses at the start of the Covid crisis.
Susannah Streeter, senior investments and markets analyst at broker Hargreaves Lansdown, said: "Oil prices are hovering around $86 a barrel, well down from the spikes to above $120 last summer,
"However, energy prices are still elevated by historical standards and so these are still buoyant times."
