Activists and charities have called for governments to move away from reliance on oil and gas.

Climate campaigners and charities have said governments in Scotland and the UK must chart a clear path away from fossil fuels after oil giant BP announced gargantuan profits in just the past three months. 

On Tuesday, the company announced bumper profits of around £7billion as the war in Ukraine rages on, pushing up gas prices. 

BP said that its gas business had been “exceptional”, leading to increased pressure on the UK Government to increase windfall taxes on energy companies whose profiteering has continued during the cost-of-living and climate crises. 

The company reported that it expects to pay £693million in windfall tax on its North Sea operations this year

Bernard Looney, BP’s chief executive officer, said: “We remain focused on helping to solve the energy trilemma - secure, affordable and lower carbon energy. 

“We are providing the oil and gas the world needs today - while at the same time - investing to accelerate the energy transition.”

The UN warned last week that the world was on course for a catastrophic 2.8C of climate warming by the end of this century. 

They demanded that emissions should fall 45% by 2030 if we are to stay within agreed climate limits.

Last week Shell declared profits of £8.2bn and Equinor £21bn, both for the third quarter of 2022, leading to social justice and climate groups to point to the damage being done in the Global South, just days before COP27. 

The $170 billion in profits in 2022 that have so far been announced by the Big 5 oil companies is more than the $116 billion a year that loss and damage are estimated to cost the global south, to date.

Daniel Willis, climate campaigner at Global Justice Now said: “It doesn’t take much to connect the dots to see what’s happening here.

“When fossil fuel companies are announcing record profits just days before COP27, its high-time leaders joined those dots once and for all too and make polluters pay up for loss and damage. 

“It’s clear they can afford to, and a polluter tax could help reduce household energy bills closer to home as well.

“People here and the global south have one thing in common when it comes to companies like BP, they’re ripping us off and think they can keep getting away with it at the expense of people and the planet. It’s high time we showed them the game is up.”

In Scotland, campaigners have said the forthcoming Energy Strategy is a chance for the Scottish Government to move away from the fossil fuel giants like BP who are harming people and the planet to instead create an energy system that runs on renewable energy.

Friends of the Earth Scotland’s Oil and Gas campaigner Freya Aitchison said: “The announcement of yet another obscene profit for a climate-wrecking oil firm highlights the scale of the pain that these companies are inflicting on the public. While fossil fuel companies are being allowed to make record breaking profits, households are facing astronomical energy bills and millions are being pushed into fuel poverty.”

“Bosses and shareholders at these big polluters are being allowed to get even richer by exploiting one of our most basic needs. BP is also worsening climate breakdown and extreme weather by continuing to invest and lock us into new oil and gas projects for decades to come.

“The Scottish Government must use the opportunity of its forthcoming Energy Strategy to chart a clear path away from fossil fuels and towards an energy system that is built on clean, reliable renewables. They must listen to the science which tells us that to meet climate targets in a fair way, fossil fuel extraction needs to be phased out in the next decade.”