Year: 2022

The British oil giants BP and Shell reported huge quarterly profits this month, reigniting calls for a windfall tax to ease the burden of bills on struggling families. Tesco’s chairman, John Allan, this week argued that there was an “overwhelming case” for a one-off levy on North Sea extractors. While the focus was on their oil production businesses, both “supermajors” have benefited from a boom in trading revenues. BP and Shell do not simply produce and sell oil, they employ thousands of traders whose job it is to buy and…

Slower global economic growth, China’s fight against COVID, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine prompted OPEC to slash for a second month running its global oil demand growth estimate for 2022. In its Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) out on Thursday, OPEC revised down—again—its forecast for global economic growth and said oil demand would grow by 310,000 barrels per day (bpd) less than the growth anticipated in the April report. Back in April, OPEC slashed its oil demand growth estimate for 2022 by 480,000 bpd on the back of lower expected global economic growth…

Europe’s top oil firms reported blowout earnings for the first quarter as oil and gas prices spiked with the European energy crisis and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. All three major producers and traders—Shell, BP, and TotalEnergies—posted their highest quarterly earnings in years, hailing “outperforming” and “exceptional” trading results for contributing to the high earnings, together with spiking oil and natural gas prices and stronger refinery margins. While it’s no secret that trading in volatile markets makes a lot of profits for trading firms and trading divisions, none of the…