SkyNews
Shell to pay £1.7bn in UK and EU windfall taxes
It comes after bosses at the London-listed oil giant said in October they had not paid any UK windfall taxes due to heavy investment in the North Sea.
Friday 6 January 2023 10:17, UK
Windfall tax payments are to cost Shell around $2bn (£1.7bn), the oil and gas company has revealed.
The cost of the UK’s energy profits levy and the EU’s recently announced solidarity contribution will reach $2bn (£1.7bn) in the final three months of its financial year, the firm said in a fourth quarter 2022 update.
It did not specify how much was owed to the UK and EU, separately.
It told investors on Friday it will not face a hit to earnings for the final quarter of 2022 due to the increased UK energy profits levy and additional EU taxes.
The UK windfall tax, announced under Rishi Sunakas chancellor, means oil and gas firms will pay a 25% levy on profits, which will be phased out when energy prices return to normal – but companies will get tax breaks worth 91p for every £1 invested.
Windfall taxes are one-off taxes imposed by government, targeting firms that have benefited from sky-high global energy costs.
Energy costs soared particularly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as countries rushed to wean themselves off Russian gas.
Most recent figures for Shell show the company reported operating profits of $9.5bn (£8.19bn) in the third quarter of this year. The October numbers were lower than that of the three previous months, but still more than double the figures for the same period in 2021.
Bosses at the London-listed oil giant said at the time that they had not paid any UK windfall taxes due to heavy investment in the North Sea.
The chief executive of Shell had previously called on the government to tax oil and gas companies in order to protect the poorest people in society from soaring energy costs.
Speaking at the Energy Intelligence Forum in London last year, Ben van Beurden said: “One way or another there needs to be government intervention that somehow results in protecting the poorest.
“That probably may then mean that governments need to tax people in this room to pay for it.”
His comment was in reference to companies rather than individuals, a Shell spokesperson later said.
The UK’s windfall tax payment is being paid in the final quarter of 2022 as the tax impact is deferred, Shell added.
The company also warned that prolonged outages at two liquefied natural gas plants in Australia had hit production.
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
