Protect people and put an end to corporate profiteering off Iran war

Since the first US‑Israeli attacks on Iran, shareholders of Shell, TotalEnergies, BP, Equinor and Harbour Energy have seen their holdings jump £73.5 billion. That’s why we moved fast to coordinate an open letter to the Prime Minister— now backed by 40+ civil society groups and major unions— demanding urgent action to rein in profiteering by energy giants, arms dealers and banks. 

The UK government’s response so far has been wildly out of step with the scale of the crisis. The Prime Minister held a press conference yesterday that did nothing to assuage people’s worries, announcing no new support, only reiterating things the government announced before the war started. Meanwhile our ministers tinker with plug‑in solar regulations, announce a review on potentially scrapping planned fuel duty rises, and assure us all they are “making contingency plans,”. Yet at the same time, other countries are acting decisively to shield their people.

Spain has launched a €5 billion package: including rent caps, anti‑profiteering controls, a freeze on maximum oil prices, new incentives for solar, heat pumps and EVs alongside fuel VAT cuts. Australia has made public transport free in some states. Germany has capped petrol station price rises. France has rolled out a €70 million emergency plan for transport, agriculture and fishing. China has capped fuel price increases. What is Starmer waiting for? And whose interests does his dithering serve? 

We can’t continue to let ordinary people bear the cost of the crisis, struggling to get to work, pay their bills and feed their children, whilst the super-rich get richer and richer from the price hikes. The government must intervene, curb the corporate profiteering, help people struggling and invest in overhauling our energy system so we’re not hostage to the volatility of crisis-prone, earth-destroying oil markets. 

False solutions

There are two false solutions dominating press coverage. Many mainstream commentators are pushing two reductive and illogical fixes: handing out massive tax breaks to oil and gas companies, and rolling back climate action commitments by expanding North Sea oil and gas extraction. These proposals are pitched as commonsense ways to lower bills, but they are anything but.

The government should consider cutting taxes like fuel duty as a way to immediately ease pressure on households. But cutting taxes without tackling profiteering simply extends the fossil fuel giants’ bonanza while stripping away the trickle of revenue that currently returns to the public. It is a sleight of hand, putting money back in our wallets, then making us pay for it through underfunding the services, schools, and hospitals we all rely on. And unlike one outrageous Times headline has suggested, taxes don’t end up in Rachel Reeves’ pocket, they go into our collective public purse. 

The tax revenue from the fossil fuel industry is already nowhere near enough to offset the environmental damage, inequality, and economic vulnerability the industry has imposed on the UK. It’s time for oil and gas companies to bear some of the load, and stop pretending they are too fragile to absorb any of the damage, when the top five oil and gas companies made $102 billion in pure profit in 2024 alone.

As for the call to “drill more” in the North Sea, even setting aside the existential threat of continued carbon pollution, the North Sea is a declining basin. It only has around 7% of its original reserves remaining, which also happen to be the hardest, most expensive, and most environmentally risky to extract. And even if it were extracted, it would be sold on the international market, subject to international prices and exported to international buyers, meaning it would likely make no meaningful difference to prices in the UK.

We’ve been failed

The truth is, tax cuts for megacorporations, and reckless, short termist oil and gas drilling is what’s got us into this mess. It won’t get us out. Despite some recent steps in the right direction, such as the decision in 2025 to keep the Energy Price Levy to 2030, successive governments have failed us by not investing adequately in renewables. We are dangerously dependent on fossil fuels for around half of our energy production. Whereas many countries as diverse as Norway, Kenya, Albania and Uruguay that have chosen to go all in on renewables are not facing the same turbulence. 

Where the UK has invested in renewables, such as in wind, we have all benefited. Wind power has cut at least £104bn from energy costs in the UK since 2010. And every watt of energy we produce in this way reduces our reliance on oil from places like Russia and Iran. 

Unfortunately because of the way electricity market pricing mechanisms work where gas sets prices, expensive and volatile fossil fuels drag up the cost of all the electricity in our grid. This means the growing share of cheaper renewables aren’t having the full impact they should be. A UK powered fully by renewable energy isn’t just essential to tackle the climate crisis, it could save all households up to £441 a year on their energy bills. 

How anyone can look at the last five weeks and conclude that the answer is to double down on fossil fuel dependence would be a mystery if we didn’t know who owned the newspapers writing these headlines, and funded the political parties behind these policies. Take people like Rupert Murdoch for instance. He’s a billionaire with deep fossil fuel investments and a long history of using his media empire to push climate scepticism and misinformation. And people like Jeremy Hosking, a hedge fund boss whose fossil fuel investments have risen by more than $25 million since the start of the war, who donated £1.7 million to Reform UK— has been a leading voice calling on the government to “Drill, Baby, Drill”. 

We are clear: the government must act now to help all of us struggling, and make the long-term investments that will spare our grandchildren from this oil-war-crisis doomloop. And above all, the profiteers benefitting from human suffering must pay for it, not people like you and me.