“Shell’s profits more than double after jump in oil and gas prices,” reports today’s Guardian, as Shell recorded its second highest quarterly earnings on record.

In response to the news, Simon Francis, End Fuel Poverty Coalition coordinator, said:
“Shell makes more profit in a single minute than most people in this country earn in a year. As wildfires rage, droughts are declared and temperatures climb, the very fuels heating the planet are also heating company profits, while households pay the price on their bills.

“This is even harder to stomach knowing that via Shell’s new North Sea joint venture with Equinor, it is structuring its operations to reduce the tax it pays in Britain. Long-term energy security cannot rely on a declining North Sea, where firms have already extracted 90% of commercially viable gas while posting billions in profits. The drill more, bill more approach simply locks households into another cycle of gas price shocks.

“Ministers should ensure the Energy Profits Levy does its job and use the proceeds to fund energy debt relief and a permanent social tariff. What’s more we need structural reform to break the link between electricity prices and volatile gas markets so that homegrown clean power brings bills down for the people who need help most.”

Bonanza for Centrica

The Shell announcement came days after Centrica added a further £497 million to its adjusted operating profits, taking the total made by British Gas and its successor company to more than £56 billion in operating profits in the forty years since privatisation.

The results came two days before the fortieth anniversary of the Gas Act 1986 receiving Royal Assent, with new analysis for the End Fuel Poverty Coalition showing the firm has averaged £1.4 billion in profit every year since British Gas was sold off. 

Around £9 billion of that total has been generated since 2020, as households faced rising bills driven by the UK’s exposure to volatile gas prices.

After a prolonged period of high bills, an estimated 5.5 million households are now spending more than 20% of their income on energy, meaning they are in deep fuel poverty.

Almost a third of households are either in energy debt or worried about falling into arrears in the weeks and months ahead.

Yet despite raking in significant profits from the energy crisis, a three year investigation by Ofgem into British Gas over the forced installation of prepayment meters found that the company failed to meet the required standards when installing meters without customer consent.

As part of the settlement announced in May 2026, British Gas agreed to pay £20 million into Ofgem’s Voluntary Redress Fund, write off up to £70 million of energy debt for vulnerable customers, continue a £22.4 million voluntary support package for prepayment meter customers launched in 2023 and pay additional compensation to customers affected between 2018 and 2021.

Simon Francis, Coordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition,again: “Privatisation has been good to Centrica’s shareholders and executives, but not for the consumers who have faced energy bill increases year after year. ”What’s worse, recent profits posted by the firm have been made on the backs of households struggling in energy debt, which itself is caused by unaffordable bills. That one firm can extract so much profit from households over a 40-year-period underlines that more public control is needed.”

Uplift Deputy Director Robert Palmer said: “Being hooked on expensive gas is one of the key reasons energy bills are so high in the UK. It’s frankly scandalous that Centrica, formerly British Gas, has made over £55 billion in profits since privatisation 40 years ago. That’s money which has been paid out by the rest of us to its bosses and shareholders.

“Add this to the fact that we have no control over gas prices, which rise every time there’s global conflict, and it explains why our bills are so high. The only way to make energy more affordable is to switch to homegrown renewable energy, the price of which we have more control over. We should also be taking a public share of wind projects, like many other countries do, so that the returns flow to the UK and everyone feels the economic benefit.

“This government needs to deliver on its promise to give us more control over life’s necessities like energy. That means getting us off volatile gas and out of the grip of the profiteers, and shifting the UK to clean energy that we have a public stake in and that is better for the planet.” 

Scottish Power too

The owners of Scottish Power posted £1.6 billion in profits in the first six months of 2026. Net profits still run into the hundreds of millions of pounds. The firm owns over 172,000km of electricity wires and controls electricity networks in southern Scotland, north west England and northern Wales, which it runs as natural monopolies.

Simon Francis commented: “Network profits are not won in a competitive market: they are earned from a regulated monopoly and paid for by households through standing charges, a daily fee people are billed before they use a single unit of energy. Growth on this scale, driven substantially by network investment in Britain, is a reminder of who ultimately funds it.

“Standing charges are the most regressive part of the bill. Prepayment customers watch their credit drain away while their homes stay cold, and arrears build up in households already carrying record levels of energy debt. 

“Ministers and Ofgem must urgently reform how network and policy costs are recovered so that the poorest households are no longer paying the most to keep the system running.”

Meanwhile, the UK’s largest gas provider, Equinor has posted increased profits for the second quarter of 2026. The firm added to a bumper first three months of the year by posting £8.58 billion in adjusted operating income.

VAT cut welcomed

The Government announcement to cut VAT from electricity bills was welcomed by fuel poverty campaigners. Simon Francis, Coordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, commented: “Removing VAT from electricity bills is a positive statement of intent by the new administration. But it does not address the scale of what households are facing, with millions still left paying an unaffordable share of their income on energy and record levels of energy debt built up over successive winters of high bills.

“The Prime Minister’s next move must be to go even further on bringing down the cost of energy and bringing in increased levels of targeted support for those who need it most: an enhanced Warm Home Discount, reformed Cold Weather Payments and an energy debt relief scheme.

“This breathing space is also not a cure. The only way to bring bills down for good is to change how they are set. That means breaking the link between gas and electricity prices, tackling excess profits in the energy industry and ending our exposure to volatile fossil fuel markets through homegrown renewables and more energy efficient homes.”

Image: https://picpedia.org/handwriting/p/profit.html License: Creative Commons 3 – CC BY-SA 3.0 Attribution: Alpha Stock Images – http://alphastockimages.com/ Original Author: Nick Youngson – link to – http://www.nyphotographic.com/