Ed Miliband is wrong about BP’s profits

Are BP’s profits of $5 billion in the first quarter of this year really the ‘unearned, unexpected windfalls of war’, as Ed Miliband asserted this morning? The idea that any oil company’s profits are unearned must come as news to the geologists and engineers who are employed in the tricky business of exploring and drilling for oil. You might claim that oil traders sometimes make unearned profits, but surely not the oil companies which extract the stuff from the ground – a business which involves large amounts of capital and vast numbers of hours of human effort.

As for the idea that BP’s profits are the ‘windfalls of war’, the shadow climate change and net zero secretary is presumably implying that oil and gas prices would be lower had it not been for the invasion of Ukraine.