Big oil and Opec are holding the world to ransom – it’s time to rein them in | Kenneth Mohammed

The UN's call for windfall taxes must be taken up by governments to help break the power of greedy cartels

As Winston Churchill reportedly said in the 1940s as he was working to co-form what would become the United Nations: Never let a good crisis go to waste." It is advice the giant oil and energy corporations and Opec, enabled by politicians, have taken to heart. This is reflected in the price of petrol and our ballooning heating bills.

A new study calculated that the oil and gas industry has made more than $2.8bn (2.4bn) a day in profits over the past half-century. In the second quarter of 2022, Exxon posted a profit of $17.9bn, the highest any publicly listed oil company has ever reported. Chevron hauled in $11.6bn, while Shell reported $11.47bn and BP $9.3 bn, its biggest windfall in more than 14 years.