Oil and gas industry delivered $2.8bn a day in pure profit for last 50 years
The total area captured by the petrostat and fossil fuel company since 1970 is $ 52 trillion, giving strength to “buy every politician, every system” and postpone actions on the climate crisis, said Professor Aviel Verbruggen, the author of the analysis. Large profits increased by state cartels which artificially limit supply.
Analysis, based on World Bank data, assesses the “lease” guaranteed by the sale of global oil and gas, which is an economic term for the unacceptable profits generated after the total production costs have been deducted, The Guardian reports.
This study has not been published in the academic journal, but three experts at the University College London, London School of Economics and Thinktank Carbon Tracker confirmed the analysis as accurate, with one mentioning the total “shocking number”.
It seems that the first long -term assessment of the total profits of this sector, with oil rental provides 86 percent of the total.
“I was really surprised by such a high amount – they were very large,” said Verbruggen, an energy and environment economist at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and former leading author of a government panel about climate change reports.
“This is a large amount of money. You can buy every politician, every system with all this money, and I think this happens. This protects [producers] from political intervention that can limit their activities,” he said.
The lease that was captured by exploiting natural resources was not accepted, said Verbruggen, added, “This is a concrete and pure advantage. They capture 1% of all wealth in the world without doing anything for it.”The average annual profit from 1970-2020 was $ 1 trillion but he said he hoped this was twice as higher in 2022, The Guardian reported.
