Despite the cost-of-living crisis, Just Stop Oil protests and an eerily warm autumn, this is a propitious time to be an oil and gas giant. Shell has announced that its adjusted earnings have more than doubled to £8.3 billion in the three months to the end of September, compared with the year before. It comes off the back of profits of £9.9 billion in the previous quarter.
Companies that turn a profit should and do pay their way in the form of corporation tax. But the case for a higher windfall tax on the oil and gas majors than the proposed 25 per cent surcharge is strong and growing. So much so that even the outgoing boss of Shell, Ben van Beurden, has called such a tax “inevitable” because “one way or another there needs to be government intervention that somehow results in protecting the poorest”.
