A necessary solution. Shell boss Ben van Beurden said at an industry conference in London on Tuesday that governments would likely have to tax energy companies more to protect the poorest in the face of the energy crisis.
“You cannot have a market that behaves in such a way (…) that it will inflict damage on a significant part of society,” he said during a question and answer session. at the Energy Intelligence Forum conference. “Somehow it takes government intervention that results in (…) protection for the poorest and that probably means governments have to tax the people in this room to pay for that,” said he elaborated in front of an audience of executives and directors of energy companies. “I believe that we have to accept this social reality”, he insisted, adding however that “it could be done intelligently or not”.
The special tax denounced by the sector
The leader was referring to taxing energy companies at a time when their profits have soared since the war in Ukraine, which has caused oil and gas prices to soar in recent months, even though they have fallen back from peaks reached just after the start of the Russian offensive.
Ben van Beurden and Shell, on the other hand, did not comment on the appropriate way to tax companies in the sector, which notably fought against a special tax which had been decided by the predecessor of the Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng and that the new Conservative government of Liz Truss will not expand.
The leader, who has just announced that he will leave office at the end of 2022, also expressed doubts about the idea of a price cap for Russian oil. Several countries are calling for it to be limited to undermine the windfall allowing Moscow to finance, in particular, its military intervention in Ukraine. In September, the G7 countries had thus decided to “urgently” cap the price, a complex mechanism to put in place, in particular by inviting a “broad coalition” of countries to implement it.
“I find it hard to understand how a cap on Russian oil prices can be effective,” Ben van Beurden said during the Energy Intelligence Forum conference, according to comments relayed on Twitter. “Intervening in complex energy markets will be very difficult. Governments need to consult with market experts on what they can and cannot do in terms of interventions,” he continued.