A protester pretends to celebrate outside Shell’s London headquarters. (Photo: Greenpeace U.K./X)
“They have amassed untold wealth off the back of death, destruction, and spiraling energy prices,” a Global Witness investigator said of a new analysis.
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches its second anniversary, one group has clearly benefited: the five biggest U.S. and European oil and gas companies.
BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies have made more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in profits since the war began, according to an analysis published by Global Witness on Monday.
“This analysis shows that regardless of what happens on the front lines, the fossil fuel majors are the main winners of the war in Ukraine,” Global Witness senior fossil fuels investigator Patrick Galey said in a statement. “They have amassed untold wealth off the back of death, destruction, and spiraling energy prices.”
The world’s five largest listed oil companies have made profits of $281 billion since Russia invaded Ukraine
🗣️“…regardless of what happens on the frontlines, the fossil fuel majors are the main winners of the war in Ukraine.” Says our @patrickgaleyhttps://t.co/EzghPq4dFz
Big Oil’s profits were fueled in part by high wholesale gas prices, which were already elevated before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022 and skyrocketed afterward. All five companies covered by the analysis reported record profits for 2022.
This bonanza came as the conflict killed more than 10,000 Ukrainian civilians.
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been devastating for millions of people, from ordinary Ukrainians living under the shadow of war, to the households across Europe struggling to heat their homes,” Galey said.
During 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden accused Big Oil of “war profiteering.”
Global Witness calculated that BP and Shell have raked in enough since the war began—at £75 billion—to pay all British household electricity bills through July 2025. Chevron and ExxonMobil have made a combined $136 billion while Total has netted $50.4 billion.
These massive profits also come as the climate crisis, driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, continues to escalate. 2023 was the hottest year on record, and likely the hottest in 125,000 years. Yet instead of using their record profits to invest in renewable energy technology, the five major oil companies have cut back on their climate initiatives and handed massive payouts to shareholders.
“This is yet another way in which the fossil fuel industry is failing customers and the planet.”
Of the more than $280 billion the five companies have brought in since the war began, they returned what Global Witness said was an “unprecedented” $200 billion to shareholders. At the same time, Shell rescinded a promise to curb oil production by 2030 and said it would fire around 200 people employed by its green jobs division. BP, meanwhile, slashed its emissions reduction target from 35-40% of 2019 levels by 2030 to 20-30%.
The money paid to shareholders is also money that could have been paid to help communities adapt to the climate crisis or recover from the damage it has already caused. The $111 billion that the five companies paid to shareholders in 2023 alone is 158 times more than the money pledged to climate-vulnerable nations at COP28, and the €15 billion that TotalEnergies rewarded shareholders with was more than the €10 billion that France needed to recover from droughts and storms in 2022.
Galey said the companies were now “spending their gains on investor handouts and ever more oil and gas production, which Europe doesn’t need and the climate cannot take.”
“This is yet another way in which the fossil fuel industry is failing customers and the planet,” Galey said.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro speaking on February 13 from the Industrial University of Santander in Bucaramanga. Photo: Presidencia Colombia
The delay in the election of the Attorney General at the center of the ongoing tensions with the right, was highlighted by the United Nations Human Rights office and IACHR
Colombia’s Supreme Court will convene on February 22 to elect the country’s Attorney General (AG). The Supreme Court had already convened on two occasions, January 25 and February 8, for the same purpose but was unable, or as some allege, unwilling, to elect one of the three candidates proposed by President Gustavo Petro for the post back in August. The court’s refusal to elect one of Petro’s candidates for the post, has been at the center of what some have termed a “soft coup” or a destabilization campaign against the left-wing president’s government.
Petro himself said on February 2 that the court’s refusal to move forward was “institutional rupture that has reached its most desperate point, because the mafia does not want to control the entire sections of the Attorney General’s office that I have put in danger for having presented a shortlist of decent women.”
The Attorney General in Colombia is part of the judicial branch of power and has the role of investigating and accusing those who are alleged to be responsible for committing crimes.
On Monday February 12, the mandate of former AG Francisco Barbosa expired. Barbosa was appointed by former far-right president Iván Duque who is also his close friend from university. The AG has had open conflict with the current president, telling Blu Radio in May 2023 “I think Gustavo Petro is irresponsible” when Petro had warned of possible foul play in the AG’s investigation of members of Petro’s Historic Pact party.
On January 25, the same day that the Supreme Court was first set to elect his replacement, Barbosa ordered a raid of the Bogotá office of the Federation of Colombian Educators (FECODE) over allegations of improper contributions to Gustavo Petro’s presidential campaign. The move was widely condemned by social movements and trade unions in the country as being politically motivated.
With his term up, Barbosa’s deputy prosecutor and close ally, Martha Mancera, has taken up the post in the interim – until the Court makes its decision. Mancera has been named in different scandals, including an alleged cover up of an agent from the Attorney General’s investigative body who was involved in drug trafficking and arms trafficking.
On Wednesday February 14 at an event in the Industrial University of Santander in Bucaramanga, Petro said, “The government doesn’t agree that the Attorney General should be handed over to people with dubious reputation, that could have links, it seems and according to media investigations, with organized crime.”
International bodies such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) also expressed concern over the delay in the Supreme Court’s deliberations. In a statement published on February 13, the body said that a further delay in the selection of an AG, “could weaken the Colombian justice system” and that the Supreme Court must “fulfill its constitutional duty”.
On February 14, the UN Office of Human Rights in Colombia also declared that it was closely following the AG election process. In its statement, it highlighted the role the AG plays in “guaranteeing access to justice, democratic consolidation, and Rule of Law”, and as such, it “encourages the Supreme Court to conclude the process of selection of the AG in the shortest time possible”.
Both statements by the IACHR and the UN alluded to allegations by the right-wing that the citizen protests in dozens of cities across Colombia on February 8 to demand that the Court carry out its constitutional obligation, were an attempt by Petro to subvert rule of law and disrupt the Supreme Court’s process. The allegations are based on a video from a protest in Bogotá which depicts a couple of demonstrators attempting to rush the barricade at the gates of the Court while other protesters are leaving the site. Many analysts have stated that those depicted in the video were seemingly right-wing infiltrators.
Nevertheless, right-wing media has launched full scale attacks on protesters and Petro, and the Attorney General’s office claimed “possible crimes were committed” and opened up a special investigation.
Added to the growing pressure on Petro’s administration, is the direct attack on his foreign minister, Álvaro Leyva, who is under investigation by the Ombudsman and suspended from his position for three months over allegations of irregularities in the bidding process for passport processing. In reality, Leyva had taken steps to confront a private firm, Thomas Gregs and Sons, that had a major contract with the state for processing passports and had control over a significant amount of the population data in the country.
Petro had said that renowned jurists called the suspension of the foreign minister unprecedented and he termed it “institutional rupture”.
With growing pressure on the court to fulfill its constitutional mandate, the Supreme Court’s session on February 22 is set to be an important date, while the movements and social organizations that mobilized and campaigned to put Petro’s government of change in office have vowed to defend it at all costs.
Labour leader Keir Starmer addressing 400 business leaders at the Kia Oval, London, during the launch of Labour Party’s plan for business, February 1, 2024
BRITAIN’S ruling class is eager to carry on the pretence that there is real choice under their political system.
Capitalism promises us that it’s the politicians that call the shots, there are real differences between those politicians and that we’re the ones that elect the politicians and they’re answerable to us.
But as with most tricks, when looked at too closely, reality and the nature of the fraud become clear.
Nowhere is it clearer that there is no real difference between the ruling-class parties than the imperialist consensus on questions of foreign policy, militarism and war.
Rather than questioning the Tory government’s policy or strategy on the burning issues of Palestine or Ukraine, Keir Starmer has bent over backwards (not hard when you’re spineless) at each and every turn to not only stymie any criticism, but to heartily endorse Tory policy.
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Britain is a proud western democracy — the oldest in the world in fact: you can stand as a candidate for whoever you want; you can vote for whoever you want; just as long as they enthusiastically cheerlead genocide in 2024.
Image of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. UK halts aid to UNRWA in Gaza over Israeli allegations that 12 staff from a total of 13,000 were involved in the 7 October 2024 attack on Israel.Zionist Keir Starmer supports Israel’s Gaza genocide.
Advisors to former President Jair Bolsonaro were arrested this Thursday morning (8) – Douglas Magno/AFP
On Thursday (8), Brazil’s Federal Police (PF) carried out an operation to investigate the involvement of former President Jair Bolsonaro, some of his former ministers and advisers in a criminal organization that allegedly planned a coup d’état in 2023. Two of Bolsonaro’s former advisers were arrested, and multiple search and seizure warrants were executed.
The country’s Federal Police carried out 33 search and seizure warrants, four preventive arrest warrants and 48 additional precautionary measures. These measures included restrictions on contact with other individuals under investigation, travel bans (with an order to surrender Bolsonaro’s passport within 24 hours) and suspension of public functions. Notably, during the 2022 presidential campaign, organized groups allegedly spread misinformation about election fraud, intending to make it easier for military intervention.
The investigation focuses on two main aspects:
Dissemination of falsehoods: The first axis targets the spreading of lies about electronic voting machines, whose supposed “hacking” and “fraud” occurred during the 2022 elections, which Bolsonaro lost.
Acts to undermine democracy: The second axis involves planning actions to overthrow democracy, including the invasion of the National Congress on January 8, 2023, with military support.
The alleged offenses under investigation include criminal organization, the violent undermining of the democratic state and an attempted coup.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, Lee Anderson and Liz Truss at the launch of ‘Popular Conservatism’. Credit: PA Images / Alamy
The launch of Popular Conservatism saw attacks on “net zero zealots” and the Climate Change Committee.
Liz Truss’s new ‘Popular Conservatism’ faction of the Conservative Party launched today with attacks on net zero targets and environmental bodies, using the playbook established by libertarian lobby groups.
The self-styled PopCons included politicians critical of climate policies and science, including Lord Frost, who is a director of the climate science denial Global Warming Policy Foundation, as well as Conservative MP Lee Anderson and Reform party president Nigel Farage.
PopCon director Mark Littlewood is the outgoing managing director of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), an influential free market think tank that has talked up its access to government.
The IEA received funding from oil company BP every year from 1967 to 2018, according to an Unearthed investigation confirmed by the IEA. Both IEA and BP have declined to say if this funding continues, when asked by DeSmog.
A branded leaflet handed out at the event, under the heading “what we stand for”, stated: “End net zero zealotry and promote energy pragmatism to provide both security of supply and low prices”.
The leaflet also named the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the government’s independent advisory body on hitting its climate targets, as one of the institutions which “stand in the way of meaningful reform”.
Littlewood’s speech criticised the UK’s net zero target, complaining about “the Climate Change Committee, pronouncing on our progress to the eye-wateringly [sic] expensive and almost certainly unachievable aim of being carbon net zero”.
Lee Anderson, former deputy chair of the Conservative Party, repeatedly attacked net zero in his speech, which he claimed “never comes up on the doorstep” aside from when it is brought up by “the odd weirdo”.
Anderson said: “if we became net zero tomorrow, this country… it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference to the earth’s atmosphere”, pointing to the higher emissions produced by other countries.
Anderson argued that net zero would cost voters money, calling for an “opt-in, opt-out” approach to what he called “green levies” on energy bills, adding: “Not one politician can put their hand on their hearts and tell you how much it’s [net zero] going to cost.”
The CCC has estimated the cost of net zero at less than one percent of GDP, while the Office for Budget Responsibility has said that “the costs of failing to get climate change under control would be much larger than those of bringing emissions down to net zero”.
Liz Truss used her speech to say: “If we look at the net zero zealots that Lee has just been talking about, the need for cheaper energy is being drowned out by some very active campaigners.” She claimed voters “don’t like the net zero policies which are making energy more expensive”.
The International Monetary Fund found in September 2022 that the energy crisis was hitting UK households harder than any country in western Europe, due to the UK’s reliance on gas for heating homes.
Tufton Street Links
Politicians fronting the PopCon group have a history of working with anti-green think tanks and supporting more fossil fuel extraction.
Truss (who went to the University of Oxford with Littlewood) has extensive ties to the IEA, which is part of the Tufton Street network – a cluster of libertarian pressure groups and think tanks that oppose state-led climate action.
In 2022, Truss’s campaign for Tory leader was run by Ruth Porter, a former communications director at the IEA. Once in 10 Downing Street, Truss hired Porter as her senior special advisor, and has since appointed her to the House of Lords. A number of former Tufton Street figures were appointed to government advisory roles during Truss’s short-lived tenure in Downing Street.
The IEA publicly supported Truss’s ‘mini-budget’, which caused economic chaos by promising large tax cuts without explaining how they would be funded. While in office, Truss lifted the UK’s ban on fracking for shale gas, a policy advocated by the IEA. (The policy was ditched by her successor Rishi Sunak.)
The IEA has consistently opposed UK government climate policies, preferring “market solutions”. In October 2022, IEA executive Andy Mayer said the government should “get rid of” its net zero target, which he called a “very hard left, socialist, central-planning model”.
During her 2022 leadership campaign, Truss received £5,000 from Lord Vinson, one of the few known funders of the Tufton Street-based Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s main climate science denial group.
Rees-Mogg also has a long record of opposing climate policies. Earlier this month he said: “the current headlong rush to net zero risks impoverishing the nation to no global benefit on emissions”.
The UK government’s legally-binding target to cut carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2050 is part of international efforts to keep global warming below 1.5C.
As Business and Energy Secretary in 2022, Rees-Mogg supported overturning the UK’s ban on fracking, and said “we have to stop demonising oil and gas” in a meeting with the UAE’s state investment company.
He also receives around £29,000 per month to host a show on right-wing broadcaster GB News. A DeSmog investigation last year found one in three GB News hosts spread climate science denial on air in 2022, while more than half attacked net zero policies. The channel‘s co-owner, Paul Marshall, has £1.8 billion invested in fossil fuels via his investment fund Marshall Wace.
Science Denial
Several figures with ties to climate science denial turned out for the PopCon launch. They included Lord Frost, a trustee of the GWPF who last year said global warming could be “beneficial”, along with Dame Andrea Jenkyns, who sits on the board of the GWPF’s campaign arm, Net Zero Watch.
The IEA and GWPF have both received funding from Neil Record, a Conservative donor who was IEA chairman until July 2023 and remains chair of Net Zero Watch. Record has donated thousands to Tory MP Steve Baker, an IEA ally and former GWPF trustee who has claimed much climate science is “contestable” and “propagandised”.
The PopCon launch was also attended by GB News host Nigel Farage, honorary president of right-wing party Reform UK, which campaigns to “scrap net zero”. Last year the party received £135,000 from donors who spread climate denial or had fossil fuel interests. Reform leader Richard Tice has claimed that “CO2 isn’t poison; it’s plant food”.
Farage posed for a photo at the PopCon event with Lois Perry, director of climate denial group CAR26, who is running for leader of UKIP and last month said she does not believe in human-caused climate change.
Addressing the audience Truss made a series of bizarre attacks on the Left, taking aim at “wokeism” and said the Tories had failed to “take on the left-wing extremists”.
“Wokeism seems to be on the curriculum,” said Truss. “There is confusion about basic biological facts, like what is a woman.
“Look at the net zero zealots, if you listen to the Today programme, I don’t recommend it, you’ll hear demands for more public spending.”
Truss went on to warn that the left were “on the march and actively organising”.
“These people have repurposed themselves, they don’t believe they are socialist or communists anymore. They say they’re environmentalists, they say they’re in favour of helping people across all communities, they are in favour of supporting LGBT people or groups of ethnic minorities.
“So they no longer admit that they are collectivists but that is what their ideology is about.”
She went on to claim that anti-capitalists were being “pandered to” by the Government and that Conservative values were being eroded and said it was “only through Conservative values that we can give the British people what they want”, however fell short on saying what this was exactly.
Former prime minister Liz Truss during the launch of the Popular Conservatism movement at the Emmanuel Centre in central London, in a bid to rally right-wing Tory MPs ahead of a general election this year, February 6, 2024
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Running through a list of enemies almost longer than her catastrophic time in Downing Street, Ms Truss nevertheless claimed that Britain was “full of secret Conservatives — people who agree with us but don’t want to admit it,” while the Tory party had been appeasing “left-wing extremists.”
Painting a picture of a world on the edge of socialism, the former prime minister, best known for crashing the economy in a matter of days, asserted that “the left have been on the march.”
“They have been on the march in our institutions, they have been on the march in our corporate world, they are on the march globally,” she claimed.
Taking on this menace and “changing the system itself” will require “resilience and bravery,” Ms Truss added.
Unfortunately, rather than resilience and bravery, she had to hand only Lee Anderson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, former frontbenchers taking a break from their present gigs on GB News.
