The extraordinary scale of the oil and gas industry’s earnings has renewed criticism and sparked calls for higher taxes.
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Oil major BP on Tuesday reported record annual profits, more than doubling last year’s total as fossil fuel prices soared following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The British energy giant posted underlying replacement cost profit, used as a proxy for net profit, of $27.7 billion for 2022. That compared with $12.8 billion for the previous year.
Analysts polled by Refinitiv had expected net profit of $27.6 billion for full-year 2022. BP said its previous annual profit record was $26.3 billion in 2008.
For the fourth quarter, BP posted net profit of $4.8 billion, narrowly beating analyst expectations of $4.7 billion.
BP announced a further $2.75 billion share buyback, which it expects to complete prior to announcing its first-quarter 2023 results in early May. It also boosted its dividend by 10% to 6.61 cents per ordinary share.
Shares of BP are up 0.8% year-to-date.
Speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” Tuesday, BP CEO Bernard Looney described the earnings as a “good set of results.”
“First of all, I hope you can see a company that is performing well, performing while transforming. We had our highest operations reliability in our history, we had the lowest production cost in 16 years so the business itself is running very well,” he said.
“Secondly, we’re leaning into our strategy today. We’re announcing up to $8 billion more investment into the energy transition this decade and up to $8 billion more into oil and gas in support of energy security and energy affordability this decade,” he added. “And thirdly, it’s about making sure we return to our shareholders.”
The results see BP join Big Oil’s profit bonanza.
British rival Shell on Thursday posted its highest-ever annual profit of nearly $40 billion. Before that, U.S. oil giant Exxon Mobil reported a $56 billion profit for 2022, marking a historic high…
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