THE giant oil company BP revealed yesterday that its profits more than doubled in the first three months of the year because of the soaring cost of crude oil caused by the imperialist war on Iran.
BP announced that its profits had soared by over 130% to £2.4 billion in the first quarter of 2026, up from £1.13 billion in the previous three months.
Recent analysis carried out on behalf of the Guardian paper found that the world’s top 100 oil and gas companies made over $30 million every hour in unearned profits during the first month of the unprovoked US-Israeli war against Iran.
BP credited its ‘exceptional oil trading’ for this massive increase in profits – a thinly disguised acknowledgement that it owes it all to the war started by US president Donald Trump to crush the Iranian nation and secure the entire Middle East for exploitation.
The steadfast refusal of the Iranian people to submit and their determined resistance has brought about a catastrophic situation where the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has throttled exports of oil and gas from the Gulf.
This drove the international benchmark for crude oil to a high of almost $119 a barrel in March before a record release of emergency stockpiles of oil helped bring the price down to $100 – only to see it increase to $111 a barrel yesterday.
The soaring price of crude oil has been a boon to the major oil companies like BP who are reaping a massive increase in unearned profits as a result of a war that has killed around 3,500 Iranians and is poised to send energy bills for US households through the roof.
UK household energy bills are projected to increase by as much as £300 a year from July, when the energy price cap is due to end.
A poll commissioned by the End Fuel Poverty Coalition found that 83% of the public are worried about energy bills and 44% said they would be unable to afford the annual increase.
64% said they believed that the energy industry is profiteering from the war.
The overwhelming majority are correct in their understanding that the giant oil companies are making huge profits on the backs of workers and demanding that they pay the full cost of a failed imperialist war.
The full effects of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have only just started to erupt in the UK as shoppers are being warned to brace themselves for soaring food prices as the full force of the war hits supermarket shelves.
With soaring oil and gas prices driving up the cost of growing vegetables, and the feed for pigs and chickens increasing due to fertilisers and other chemicals vital to food production choked off as well, the cost of food is set to rocket.
Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, said: ‘While we’re not yet to see the full force of the Middle East conflict feeding into consumer prices, it will not be long before it begins to.’
While workers in the UK and across the world are facing a future of poverty and mass unemployment, oil giants and energy companies are making vast profits out of imperialist war and slaughter.
The powerful British working class will never allow itself to be driven back to the poverty of the 1930s Great Depression and increasingly sees that capitalism is completely bankrupt and can only survive by imposing its bankruptcy on the backs of workers.
Workers have had enough of a capitalist system that has reached the end of the road, and they have had enough of a Labour government that serves only the interests of the bosses and bankers.
The time has come for the working class to force the TUC to call an emergency conference to immediately organise a general strike to bring down the Labour government and bring in a workers government.
A workers government will nationalise the oil companies and major industries placing them under the management of the working class as part of building a socialist planned economy.
This is the only way forward.
