A BP petrol station sign in Chelmsford, Essex A BP petrol station sign in Chelmsford, Essex
Iran conflict sends BP profits skyrocketing and takes Euro fuel giants’ gains to £66.4bn
DONALD TRUMP’S Iran war has sent BP’s profits soaring to £6.31 billion in just three months while one in 10 languish in fuel poverty and diesel costs cripple the economy.
The latest quarterly profits represent a staggering 282 per cent rise on the £1.65bn it coined-in over the same period in 2025, as the once state-owned business reaps the rewards of a war that has seen supplies hit by blockages in the Straits of Hormuz, and households face a 27 per cent rise in fuel bills from January.
The figures come hot on the heels of rivals Shell posting profits of over £8bn in the same period, and bring BP’s total haul to an eye-watering £13bn in the last nine months alone.
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Pointing out that the latest figures from Europe’s oil and gas giants bring total profiteering to a staggering £66.4bn this year, Global Witness, campaign group spokesman Jonathan Noronha-Gant said: “It is obscene that polluters are continuing to cash in on the fallout of the war in Iran, making more bumper profits from spiralling oil prices while innocent civilians suffer.
“These massive profits come as ordinary people across Europe are struggling with the rising cost of living, with many struggling to afford to heat their homes as winter arrives.
“Oil giants can and should pay much more for the damage they are doing to our planet.”
Echoing the call for tougher taxation, 350.org head of global campaigns Clemence Dubois hit out: “The climate crisis is not an abstract future threat.
“People are facing deadly heat, destroyed livelihoods and growing insecurity now.
“Governments are being forced to find money to protect their populations, while fossil fuel companies are forecast to make extraordinary profits from the same energy system that leaves people vulnerable.”
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham says ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that he’s delayed the go-ahead for Jackdaw and Rosebank North Sea oil and gas extraction until after the Holborn and St. Pancras by-election – don’t want democracy interfering with Capitalism.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Donald Trump urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
‘These obscene profits are a slap in the face to workers whose jobs and futures have not been adequately planned for’
Lloyds nearly doubled third-quarter profits to £2.3bn and Shell’s leapt to £8.12bn in the same week the Chancellor gave banks a lighter tax hit than expected — prompting calls for levies to redirect “obscene” gains into household support
“SICKENING” super-profits by banks and fossil-fuel giants are windfalls from the same crises driving a cost-of-living crisis for ordinary people, MPs and campaigners warned today.
Just a day after Chancellor John Healey’s light-touch Budget appeased banks with a lower than expected corporation tax surcharge, Lloyds Banking Group revealed a near-doubling of profits in the third quarter — to £2.3 billion from £1.2bn in the same period last year.
And oil giant Shell reported a similarly dramatic rise, its third-quarter earnings leaping to £8.12bn from £4.08bn a year ago.
Their surging fortunes reflect a boom time for banks and Big Oil alike. Barclays was the first of the British “big four” banks to post third-quarter profits at the start of the week, giving a figure of £2.3bn — a 12 per cent rise that hasn’t stopped it announcing 5,000 job cuts. HSBC followed with $9.6bn (£7.2bn), a 32 per cent increase. NatWest is due to announce its figure tomorrow.
And the five largest Western oil companies, BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Shell and TotalEnergies, are expected to report combined third-quarter profits of $53bn (£40bn), more than twice the same figure last year.
“The banks and energy firms are cashing in on the very same soaring prices that are hammering households,” Leeds East MP Richard Burgon told the Morning Star.
“Their super-profits aren’t the result of great investments or innovation. They’re windfalls from the economic turmoil caused by the wars on Ukraine and Iran.
“Windfall taxes should be used to redirect these excess profits into where they’d be really useful — giving cost-of-living support to ordinary people.”
The then energy secretary Ed Miliband (second from left) at the Acorn project in Aberdeenshire, one of the CCS projects due to receive government funding, in summer last year. Photograph: PA Images/Alamy Stock Photo/Alamy Live News.
Chris Packham says £24bn earmarked for projects with ‘ludicrously uncertain results’ should be redirected to help lower bills and cut emissions
Campaigners are calling on the chancellor to cut the government’s £24bn spending plans for “fairytale” carbon capture technologies in favour of funding green schemes that can reliably cut emissions and lower energy bills.
The environmentalist Chris Packham is leading an 11th-hour appeal for the Treasury to use this week’s budget to scale back the government’s “exorbitantly expensive” support for carbon capture, which is now more than the planned spending for the US, the EU, Norway and Japan combined.
He said it was a “national embarrassment” that the government had earmarked £24bn to support a series of carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects developed by big oil companies, including BP and the Norwegian state oil company Equinor, and urged ministers to “put things right”.
“CCS is a tech fairytale,” the naturalist and broadcaster said. “It should be a national embarrassment that the UK is pumping more taxpayer money into it than any other country in the world. This budget is a chance to put things right.”
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Packham called on the government to safeguard funding promises “that empower households to lower bills” rather than “bankrolling exorbitantly expensive projects with ludicrously uncertain results”.
dizzy: It’s totally ridiculous that the government is wasting, throwing away so much money on CCS. It’s fantastic total nonsense promoted by the fossil-fuel industry so that they can carry on polluting.
The government also wastes so much money in other ways subsidising the fossil-fuel industry – an industry that is totally loaded, awash with money profiteering from destroying the planet. This UK government is close to giving away North Sea resources since tax incomes are minimal, almost non-existant. There are so many tax loopholes / subsidies for fossil fuel companies to destroy the planet.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham says ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that he’s delayed the go-ahead for Jackdaw and Rosebank North Sea oil and gas extraction until after the Holborn and St. Pancras by-election – don’t want democracy interfering with Capitalism.
A worker collects engine oil as he works at a degassing station in Zubair oil field near Basra, Iraq
ENERGY firms raked in an excess of £6 billion in Iran war windfall profits this year, it was revealed today as households brace for yet another bill rise at the end of the month.
Campaigners said profits generated in Britain by these companies equate to over £200 for every household in the country, while a further increase in gas prices is expected in the next Ofgem price cap announcement on August 26.
Financial results posted by the world’s top energy firms revealed their British profits are only one part of their global profits, totalling £95bn in 2026.
Analysis from the End Fuel Poverty Coalition (EFPC) revealed the excess profits linked to global energy market disruptions as a result of the US war on Iran, which has increased cost pressures on households in Britain, as well as other countries.
Researchers looked at financial results posted by BP, Centrica, Chevron, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Iberdrola, Shell and Total.
EFPC co-ordinator Simon Francis said windfall profits must be considered alongside previous findings saying a third of households are “on the brink of, or are in energy debt.”
“These price shock profiteers are doing very well out of the Iran conflict, but they are doing little to solve the underlying problems,” Mr Francis said.
“As people brace for the next price cap announcement on August 26 and a third of households are on the brink of or in energy debt, the energy industry watches the profits climb.”
Article by republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
The rubble of a burned out residential home smolders in the Balboa neighborhood of Spokane, Washington, on August 2, 2026. (Photo by Erick Doxey/AFP via Getty Images)
“The fossil fuel industry may not have struck the match, but the climate crisis they drove has loaded our landscapes with tinder,” said an environmental activist.
Over 60,000 people were ordered to evacuate the Spokane area over the weekend as it was devastated by what Democratic Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell called the “top fire” in a nation currently being scorched by climate-fueled blazes.
Illustrating how the climate crisis is already impacting lives and communities across the country and the globe, three raging fires reportedly consumed over 600 structures as of Sunday, including homes and businesses, and reduced entire streets to their foundations.
At a briefing on Sunday afternoon, officials said more than 250,000 acres were burning across Washington, but reported no deaths or injuries.
Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown called it “the worst natural disaster our region has faced.”
Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson has requested assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is under the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) wrote on social media that she had spoken with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and that he “made clear the federal government will do everything it can to support response and recovery,” though President Donald Trump has previously intervened to block disaster aid to Democrat-led states.
While the fires moderated over the weekend, on Monday they remained largely uncontained and continued to spread due to dry conditions from recent severe droughts in the region, exacerbated by rising global temperatures.
This is Spokane, Washington. Right now. First weekend of August.
“This is climate change playing out live in real time,” said meteorologist and Climate Central journalist Shel Winkley in a video about the Spokane fires.
Warmer temperatures, he explained, have caused a vicious cycle of “weather whiplash” in which greater winter rainfall facilitates plant growth before harsher summer heat domes suck moisture from these plants, turning them into a tinderbox.
“Northeastern Washington and central Oregon now see at least three more weeks of fire weather days each year than they did just back in the 1970s,” Winkley said. “More fire weather days means more chances for a spark, any spark, to turn into this.”
The blazes are part of a nationwide trend, with wildfires this year more severe on average than in previous years. Over the past decade, the average annual acreage burned in the US was more than double the average of the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to data from the National Interagency Fire Center.
Last week, an Oxfamanalysis of data published in the journal Nature found that emissions from just five oil companies—BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies—were sufficient to cause around 1 in 4 heatwaves reported globally between 2000 and 2023—“heatwaves that would have been virtually impossible without human-made climate change.”
Using S&P Capital Trucost data, the group estimated that Big Oil was responsible for more than $60 billion in environmental damage last year.
But as costs fall on the public, oil companies like Chevron and ExxonMobil have reported record profits of $12.1 billion and $14.5 billion over the past quarter, in part due to global oil price spikes driven by Trump’s war with Iran.
“The fossil fuel industry may not have struck the match, but the climate crisis they drove has loaded our landscapes with tinder,” said Clémence Dubois, the campaigns director for the environmental group 350.org. “Chevron and Exxon are profiteering from a model of distraction, leaving ordinary people to pay the price with higher bills and devastating impacts such as these fires. These profits feel almost criminal.”
Jay Inslee, Washington’s former Democratic governor and a longtime advocate for policies to combat the climate crisis, said on Sunday that his friend, a legislator from Spokane, had been forced to flee his home due to the fires.
“Climate change isn’t some faraway threat,” Inslee said. “It’s happening right now, to our neighbors and friends. We have to fight for them.”
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Power-mad orange gasbag Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
A BP petrol station sign in Chelmsford, Essex A BP petrol station sign in Chelmsford, Essex
