Just as many motorists are being driven off the road by record fuel prices, one oil company BP has just announced that it has had a 6 per cent rise in profits for the second quarter of 2008. Market analysts claim that this huge profit is largely thanks to a sharp rise in the price of oil.
During the second quarter of 2008 the price of a barrel of oil rose by about 35 per cent. Unions and the Green Party (as we posted on July 23) are now calling on a for a windfall tax for BP and other oil producers
In the first half of the year, BP has confirmed that it had made $13.4bn, a rise of 23% on the first half of 2007.
According to the oil company the majority of its profits come from its upstream business - the exploration and production of oil.
In the downstream business, which includes refining oil and selling it at its 24,000 forecourts worldwide, it made a profit of $539m in the second quarter, this was actually $2.7bn less than it had made in the same period a year earlier.
Simon McBride
