Economy News
BP, Shell and TotalEnergies cash in on the refining boom: windfall or ‘obscene’?
Europe's oil majors have posted their best results in years as the war in the Middle East pushed up refining margins. MercoPress reports that Shell and TotalEnergies doubled their third-quarter profits, recording their best quarters since 2022, with refining margins almost four times higher than a year earlier. Both expanded their share buyback programmes.
A day later, BP reported underlying replacement cost profit of $8.46bn (£6.3bn), its highest since the $8.9bn recorded in 2008, according to the Guardian. That is almost four times the $2.2bn of the same quarter last year.
The Guardian links BP's jump directly to the war in the Middle East, which drove up oil and gas prices, while MercoPress points to tensions in the region lifting refining margins across Europe's biggest producers.
“Banner quarter.” — BP, on its results, via The Guardian
How each outlet framed it
- MercoPress — the business view: the refining boom behind the doubling, and more cash returned to shareholders.
- The Guardian — the backlash: climate campaigners labelled BP's profits ‘obscene’ while ‘innocent civilians suffer’ in the conflict.
Where the numbers differ: the outlets measure different companies. MercoPress gives the scale of the jump for Shell and TotalEnergies as a doubling; the Guardian's BP figure is an almost fourfold rise.
What we don't know yet: how long the high margins will last, and whether the UK and EU will respond with new windfall taxes.