BP CEO pay doubles to US$12M as high energy costs surge profit

LONDON –

Total pay for BP’s CEO greater than doubled to US$12 million final 12 months, the power large mentioned Friday, as hovering power prices allowed oil and gasoline firms to rake in file income whereas squeezing households and small companies.

London-based BP’s disclosure got here a day after rival Shell reported an identical multimillion-dollar pay package deal for its prime government on the heels of each firms posting their highest-ever annual earnings final month.

BP mentioned in its annual report that CEO Bernard Looney was paid a complete of 10 million kilos (US$12 million) in 2022, up from 4.5 million kilos the earlier 12 months. Looney’s pay package deal features a money bonus of two.4 million kilos and 6 million kilos in bonus firm inventory.

BP reported in February that its revenue doubled to US$28 billion as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine despatched oil and gasoline costs hovering.

Fat income at fossil gas giants and massive salaries for prime executives have spurred calls for for the businesses to do extra to protect shoppers from excessive power prices which have fuelled decades-high inflation and ratcheted up utility payments.

Activist teams reminiscent of Global Witness and a few opposition lawmakers in Britain have referred to as for increasing taxes on the windfall income of power firms and taxing bonuses.

It’s a “twisted irony” {that a} rich minority acquired even richer “precisely because bills have been so unaffordable for the majority,” mentioned Jonathan Noronha-Gant, a senior campaigner at Global Witness.

Britain’s Liberal Democrat celebration on Thursday referred to as for a one-off “bonanza bonus” tax for power firm executives after Shell reported that then-CEO Ben van Beurden’s pay package deal jumped by half in 2022, to just about US$12 million, because of a file $40 billion annual revenue.

The proposed tax is just like a levy on bankers’ bonuses that the U.Okay. authorities imposed in 2009-10 amid the fallout of the worldwide monetary disaster.

“It is outrageous that oil and gas bosses are raking in millions in bonuses while families struggle to heat their homes,” celebration chief Ed Davey mentioned. “Whether it is executive bonuses or soaring profits, the money being made out of Putin’s illegal war should be helping struggling families not oil and gas barons.”

The BP committee that units government pay mentioned it has “carefully sought to moderate outcomes” and its choices “reflect a sensible approach.”