BP’s £2bn profits cause anger amid climate crisis | BP

BP has angered climate campaigners by reporting profits of $2.6bn (£2bn) for the second quarter of the year as the climate crisis triggers extreme heatwaves.

The company blamed falling oil and gas markets for the fall in profits from $8.5bn in the same period last year when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ignited a surge in global energy markets.

BP announced it would return a further $1.5bn to investors through a share buyback over the next three months, despite the fall in profits.

BP’s profits have fuelled growing anger at fossil fuel companies among green groups, which have accused the oil companies of “obscene” profits at the expense of hard-pressed families and the environment.

Tommy Vickerstaff, a lead UK campaigner for 350.org, said: “We’re almost desensitised to BP’s profits at this point because the government has continuously failed to take action to redistribute them. But there is nothing normal or routine about BP’s profit margins or about the destructive heatwaves we’re seeing across Europe that BP is directly responsible for causing.”

Russia’s war in Ukraine helped BP triple its profits in the second quarter of last year to $8.5bn, the second-best quarterly profit result in the company’s history. This allowed BP to hand investors $3.5bn through a share buyback programme, while it increased its total dividend payout by 10% to about $1.1bn.

It also fuelled a political row in which Labour demanded the government impose a windfall tax on energy companies which profited from the record prices caused by the Ukraine war.

Global oil and gas market prices have tumbled since reaching a peak last year. The global oil price averaged $76.60 a barrel in the last quarter, down sharply from an average of about $112 a barrel in the second quarter of last year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

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