B.p.obscene profits

[tresrikay]

B.P. Obscene profits

The news has today been full of B.P. profit announcements, now known As B*****D. Profiteers, profits up 148% up on same quarter last year and 52% up on last quarter and be prepared for all our other caring oil companies ("we make no profit on the pumps we just provide petrol and diesel as a benevolent gesture to the public") .
Do these Idiots think that the general public are all sub normal neanderthals, that will believe all the C***P that they spew out to us.
Do they not realise that we KNOW they will be awarding themselves huge mega million bonusses to themselves this Christmas as we the captive customer strugle to fill a tank to visit distant loved ones........
These Oil companies are an insult to the world at this time of instability and these profit announcements are them sticking 2 fingers up at us while they grease their snouts in the trough of plenty.
Its time to Windfall tax them till they squeal for mercy and confiscate their bonusses and give them to the pensioners who sit huddled in blankets , in freezing houses because they can't afford the fuel bills,while these scumbags, sun themselves in the Carribbean sipping Bollinger.

 

[messenger 2.5td]

BP profits

And so say all of us!!!

 

[Deleted member 207]

I'm going to take a slightly contrary view, mainly because all of my superannuation has taken a massive dump in the past few weeks. The one light (for me) is that I have some shares in an oil company from years ago, they have fallen in resale value (for the past 10 years) but the dividends they have paid in the last two years are finally starting to bear some fruit. Pre 2006 they were absolute dogs in the dividend department, I was lucky to get 3% return on value of the shares, I might as well have had the money under the mattress. Now they are starting to look good, about 8% return last year and some interim forecasts for the half year of 12%.

So whilst I feel the pain at the pump, I also feel some pleasure that at last I'm getting a return on my investments.

My view is that if you can move investment money into oil companies and food/supermarkets companies then there is a good chance that your pension funs will survive reasonably well on the dividends those companies will produce over the next 5 years. Remember that oil sales keep on increasing irrelevant of how much the price is hiked up - look at the 1970s oil shock.

 

[tofo]

i think their profits are being reaped from around the world
to be taxed here
i wonder if they had a windfall tax placed upon them
would they still be domiciled here in good old blighty
to pay tax on their profits next year
i rather think not
i personaly cant see a problem with profit if its not excessive
after all we mostley all like interest on our money in the bank
if i was investing 100s of billions
then a return of billions would be my expectation​

 

[lenny]

Shell

Cant beat Shell up here at the moment ,unleaded 94.9p.lt.,, diesel £1.7.9 p.lt. I,m not saying they are squeaky clean but they are winning the price war up here for the moment.

 

[Deleted member 775]

with all the proffits they make they could charge 3p a litre and still be ok

 

[Deleted member 4053]

shell

In Dundee Shell is 94.9 and 104.9 matching Supermarkets it is
cheaper than Edinburgh prices

weez
Tony

 

[cipro]

Diesel is £1.07 at Morrisons in shropshire was as much as £1.27 last month

 

[tresrikay]

All the oil companies are as guilty as B.P., We are all enslaved by them as we need what they sell to not only enjoy our M/h,ing but to commute, heat our homes and to provide untold essential commodities on our weekly shop.
To me this makes them akin to a utility and as such I feel they should be run as such, for the benefit of the people and certain controls upon their profits would be of benifit to all of society rather than shareholders. As we are now all shareholders in the major banks, so we should be in the oil companies.
When North Sea oil was discovered the then Minister in Control (Tony Benn) had control of the output and he stated that as a natural resource of the Nation it should be only for the use of our nation and by so using it would be a resource that would guarentee self sufficiency for 300 years......Then came Thatcher who grabbed the bucks and sold it to all in sundry.
the chickens are now firmly back to roost, the oil companies are milking us dry selling us our own natural resource. Since june this year B.P have made 6.9 BILLION in profit. to me that is an obscene affront to me and all the long suffering working people around the world, from who's pockets it has come.
I too have pension investments but they are in an ethical fund of Clerical medical, that only invests in Ethical busineses throughout the world and I bank with the Co-op as they too will not invest in any unethical business... I feel I put my money where my mouth is and if that brings me a less than favouable return, then at least I have no guilt about taking the kings shilling as it were from the likes of B.P. Shell, Esso, Exon or Mobil.
If there was an alternative to my being forced to purchase from them then I would be banging at that door in the morning.

 

[Deleted member 207]

Since june this year B.P have made 6.9 BILLION in profit.

Which according to BP's last published balance sheet gives them about a 3.8% return (pre tax/pre retained earnings for future investment) on the money that is invested in oil refineries, oil wells, manufacturing plants and CEO's Rolls Royces - about 155 billion. You have to be mindful of the enormous sums of money involved in oil field developments - the oil shale projects in Canada are in the tens of billions just to setup. Also in fairness to BP they have persevered with their solar power business for a couple of decades which has not returned them anything as yet.

Whilst the scale of the profit - 6.9 billion seems enormous, you have to compare it to the amount of money that a business has invested to achieve that profit along with how much turnover the business has. Currently would anyone go and buy BP shares? (other than me?). There are thousands of other businesses that make far greater % profits than the oil companies - Microsoft makes more in profits than half of the countries around the world have as a GNP. Supermarkets around the world make upto 30% returns on their investments, are they evil? They've forced the closure of millions of "corner stores" but have brought the cost of food down in real terms, probably to the benefit of everyone who uses them.

At least BP makes something - they are wealth creators - unlike the short term speculators who make money out of destroying other peoples' wealth and livelyhoods.

 

[tresrikay]

I wish I had Rogers faith in a noble B.P., however in todays climate I doubt that a very great proportion of this particular extravagance, will filter as far as you believe.
By its very nature B.P. and its competitors are engaged in an ever expanding search for the resource that it exploits and by that, it reaches communities and environments that are ever more fragile and by those reasons more endangered by the touch of its technolgy.
These places are a delicate commune on the edges of survival and any disruption can devestate those chains of survival. The Oil Co roadshow, when it comes to town leaves much more than a tyre track , when it packs its bags and leaves town, by its very nature it takes the very bowels of its challenge and the places it leaves when the mother load is exhausted, can never return to how it once was.
The humans have tasted the (good life), the eco systems are changed beyond repair and the links that once bound those margins of interdependence are broken forever.
This is the real price of OIL, and all to keep us raging as we waste its product, queing in ever lengthening traffic jams.

 

[Deleted member 3011]

Roger is quite correct.

Don't know about the UK, but in Australia, the major part of the nations superannuation funds are invested in the stock market. As he said, the share prices have taken a hammering recently and it is no fun to see one's fund lose (on paper) around 50 to 80 thousand AU$ in one day, but the saving grace is that so far at least, company profits are up and so dividends are also up and that is what is paying my pension.

A public company is really its shareholders and without shareholders, the company wouldn't exist and if it doesn't make a profit, the shareholders bail out and there eventually isn't a company.

The actual gross amount of earnings is really irrelevant. What matters is return on investment, dividends per share to keep the shareholders (owners) happy, and how much tax they pay to the government (that's us).


tresrikay, since you feel so strongly about it, I guess you have sold all your vehicles, stopped eating and wearing clothes, turned off the central heating and had the gas and electricity disconnected. No? Hmmm!!

 

[Deleted member 775]

oil is not just about petrol and diesel its our clothes on our back our food we eat even our drugs we use to save our miserable lives, without oil we would not be talking on our computers 99% of everything we use comes from oil . yes we know our environment suffers and the small people that live in some jungle somewhere in the back of beyond but that is the way of the world now. when it comes down to it something or someone suffers for everything we need, we all eat tuna so dolphins drown in nets look at the ivory trade, one of the biggest disasters is logging of the rain forrest, who uses chinese medicine a lot do, think of the tigers the bares used in that could go on and on so i think we pay a small price environmentally for oil unless of course you count the lives of our and others troops lost in as some say rightly or wrongly to safeguard our wanton greed for that gooey black stuff........ and to shore up our nice comfy retirement funds come to think of it if we dident have oil we would not need our pensions cos there would be nothing really to spend it on .

 

[Deleted member 207]

One of the other things that the oil industry has done - is substantially clean up the Western World - I'm not sure about the Third World.

I'm just old enough to remember the last smog in London in the mid 1960s before the almost total replacement of coal by natural gas - oil companies drilled those gas wells.

I recall my father talking about smogs pre 1939 and he claims that they would hang around for weeks, everything was dirty with soot througout the house, you ended up with soot all around your nostrils and mouth, you coughed up soot and your eyes leaked soot, people died by the thousand.

 

[Deleted member 775]

hi roger i agree about the smogs but as for soot everywhere seems a bit farfetched with a coal fire, something very wrong where you used to live mabey the chimney needed cleaning but there was nothing wrong with open fires where i come from. at least with an open fire you could keep warmer for less cash than the gas companies (that by the way are run from abroad) want to charge us and free hot water to boot , if you did run out of coal which by the way we never did as i was a miner you could always burn wood. there was a bit on the tv yesterday about solid fuel fires making a comeback due to the cost of gas nowadays and with a open fire you can make lovely toast hot chestnuts baked potatoes not to mention a nice crumpet or two, try that on a gas fire no contest .

 

[Deleted member 207]

but as for soot everywhere seems a bit farfetched with a coal fire

The soot was part or or cause of the smog as far as I know. The smog would get inside houses and just leave soot spots everywhere.