As TotalEnergie published its 2022 numbers today, with a USD 20 billion profit (or USD 36 billion if you exclude the USD 15 billion charge linked to leaving Russia), it is a bit harder to find the tax on income paid in France. The company notes it is paying more than USD 30 billion in taxes worldwide, but most of these are paid directly to the producer countries. Meanwhile,
Oil and gas is a boom and bust business. They need the booms to survive the busts. No one will offer Big Oil handouts when oil is cheap.
Utilities, on the other hand, are boring. They generate steady revenues. They don't need booms to survive, and aren't supposed to suffer badly durings busts. So for them, the high gas prices were a true windfall.
Fair enough - although the boom&bust is usually linked to the economic cycle - demand increases with growth and investments take time to catch up, leading to higher prices as supply is first squeezed and then price drops as supply overtakes demand.
In this cases there is an external shock unrelated to economic activity or the investment cycle, being a war, which creates a different supply/demand balance (in this case with the withdrawal of Russia gas from the balance), and an immediate windfall for those with supply at hand. So it can be argued that this is a one-off windfall for oil&gas companies as well.
To be the Devil's advocate:
Oil and gas is a boom and bust business. They need the booms to survive the busts. No one will offer Big Oil handouts when oil is cheap.
Utilities, on the other hand, are boring. They generate steady revenues. They don't need booms to survive, and aren't supposed to suffer badly durings busts. So for them, the high gas prices were a true windfall.
Fair enough - although the boom&bust is usually linked to the economic cycle - demand increases with growth and investments take time to catch up, leading to higher prices as supply is first squeezed and then price drops as supply overtakes demand.
In this cases there is an external shock unrelated to economic activity or the investment cycle, being a war, which creates a different supply/demand balance (in this case with the withdrawal of Russia gas from the balance), and an immediate windfall for those with supply at hand. So it can be argued that this is a one-off windfall for oil&gas companies as well.
Terrible...