Britain’s energy monopolies are enjoying a profit bonanza as their rivals disappear and Ofgem fixes prices on their behalf.
BP boss Bernard Looney has a message for all those out there who are facing soaring energy bills and struggling to make ends meet.
“When the market is strong, when oil prices are strong and when gas prices are strong, this is literally a cash machine”
BP boss Bernard Looney
As a result of supply disruptions in the global gas and oil markets, the situation has been getting steadily more favourable for the energy monopolies as their small-fry competitors have gone to the wall and they have been able to resuscitate their former price-fixing cartel.
Handily, the price fixing is now done via the regulator Ofgem, whose ‘price cap’ is to rise by 50 percent in the spring – in response to rising wholesale prices, we are told. Customers of failed providers are being transferred back into the warm embrace of the good old ‘big six’, and plonked unceremoniously back onto the highest allowed (and soon to rise further) tariff.
And yet despite all this public handwringing over the cost of wholesale gas, BP (not a supplier to Britain’s homes but a major supplier of fuel to its drivers) made profits for last October, November and December of a staggering $3.3 billion, up from only (!) $86m in the same period in the previous year.
The Workers Party campaigns for a Corona Tax on the biggest profiteers
The top six richest people in the UK have an estimated combined wealth of £39.4bn. The richest one percent of people here own the same wealth as 80 percent of the country. [i]
It is estimated that the UK has 4,640 ‘ultra-high net worth individuals’, with personal wealth in excess of £80m each. [ii]
A one-off 5% tax on these individuals alone would see the richest 4,640 people in our society contribute more than £17 billion to the Treasury [iii] – money that could be spent on proper jobs, decent pay, renewed infrastructure, social housing and frontline healthcare.
Visit WWW.CORONATAX.ORG for more information.