In 2022, oil giants Shell, TotalEnergies and BP made about $37 billion in pre-tax profits, surpassing the $34 billion earned by the world’s largest energy traders for the first time, according to data from Bernstein Research. . Moreover, this rapid profit growth occurred in the most volatile period associated with the events following the launch of the Russian NWO in Ukraine.
These incredible profit figures exceed the combined revenues of the four largest private energy traders. Usually, until last year, everything was just the opposite. Dealers, as principal and integral companions of markets and trading floors, have always earned much more than the pure producers who sold them raw materials.
Shell made $16 billion in pre-tax profits from its energy trading arm, while TotalEnergies made $11.5 billion and BP made $8.4 billion, according to Bernstein Research data cited by the Financial Times.
Although comparing figures between private traders and oil giants is not a completely accurate method, the general trend is that the trading arm of oil giants is becoming increasingly important. In other words, the big players in the real sphere of production are taking the markets into their own hands, whereas last year they succeeded in outwitting pure speculators on their own territory.
This new trend continues to gain momentum after US giant ExxonMobil announced in February that it would create its own global sales arm later this year as part of a major reorganization aimed at boosting “commercial intensity “.
It is already becoming apparent that the cloudless and profitable existence of traders has long been ensured by the passivity of mining and processing companies. This period is fading into the past as a whole era of permissiveness for dealers and speculators. Earlier, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman had promised to deal with them, now that big players influential and powerful enough to put an end to the strange domination of merchants have taken hold of the matter.
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