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Comment by bob29 | Hacker News Reader

This is just a sign that BP is doing a good and efficient job at delivering energy to customers effectively.

Or that there isn't enough competition in the market.

Tends to happen when you take political action intended to destroy an industry

Really? There are several major oil companies in US alone, and many more throughout the world[1]. The global market for oil is more competitive than the market for pizzas in your local neighborhood.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_oil_and_gas_co...

It's also a sign that they aren't passing any of the savings onto their customers.

2020 lockdown helped companies realize they can just cut manufacturing and hike prices.

You think BP sets the price on a barrel of crude?

We are at ~$100 a barrel just like in 2014. How much was gas in 2014? How were oil companies profits in 2014? Do you see a problem here?

For some reason everyone is just ignoring the huge profit margins of corporations while this whole "inflation" thing is happening. There's no reason for corporations to be profiting like this at the expense of the populace

> There's no reason for corporations to be profiting like this at the expense of the populace

BP just had a $24bn non-cash writedown in Q1[0] due to their stake in Russian oil giant Rosneft. Should the "populace"/government be giving them ~$20bn this quarter to make them whole on their entirely government-created loss?

I'm going to go out on a limb that you're not in favor of that.

[0] https://news.sky.com/story/bp-slumps-to-20-4bn-loss-as-it-bo....

No absolutely not. We also should not be giving tax payer money to corporations to pad their profit margins.

We have people we are hungry and homeless while these corporations get tons of money from the government, same with Intel getting money to build fabs. They have money, they can use theirs but they won't because it would cut into their margins and they can't see past the quarterly profits. Same with the oil companies.

Corporations do not have an inherent right to exist over the people that make them up or the people that make up Amy given country. Corporations need to be able to fail.

Why should anyone bail out BP Nord Stream 2 investment?

What investment? Nord Stream 2 AG is owned by Russian state-owned gas giant Gazprom, not Rosneft.[0] Here's who paid for NS2 to be built:

> Gazprom paid half the cost of building Nord Stream 2, with the remainder of the $11 billion pipeline project financed by British oil and gas major Shell, Austria's OMV, France's Engie and Germany's Uniper and Wintershall DEA.

There's no British Petroleum investment to "bail out."

[0] https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/exclusive-nord-stream...

Gazprom, Rosneft, it all seems the same. After all Schröder got chairman seat at Rosneft for his treason NS work. But yes, you are correct, Shell was the company directly involved with NS2. My bad.

Yes.

They're a massive multinational producer. They get to say how much they produce and I've a bridge to sell you if you think they can't conspire with other producers to inflate prices.

These are finite resources with an expensive discovery and extraction. There's no competition to drive the price anywhere but up.

BP produced 675 million barrels last year. The world produced 10.3 billion. BP cannot control the price like that.

You mean OPEC? or OPEC+? Doesn't seem like they would care much about BP's opinion.

Don't PR for them for free. Soaring prices mean several more people will suffer the cold this winter

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