Government slams energy companies for their outstanding profit but forgot about Hungarian MOL

The war in Ukraine “is bad for everybody except large energy companies”, a state secretary of the prime minister’s cabinet office said in a video published on Facebook on Sunday.

Csaba Dömötör insisted that some companies were getting “stinking rich” through soaring energy prices, with special regard to “large, international energy companies”. Below you can watch his video:

Referring to public data from 2022, Dömötör said Austria’s OMV had profits after tax amounting to 5 billion euros. Shell posted a record 40 billion dollars, twice as much as before the war. British Petrol also broke records with 28 billion dollars, over twice as much as in 2021. France’s Total earned a record 20.5 billion dollars, while US Chevron posted 35 billion dollars and Exxon 56 billion dollars, Dömötör said.

“It appears that imposing sanctions and the resulting high prices is no bad business … but not for us,” Dömötör said. He said “Hungary’s energy bill” had increased by 4,000 billion forints (EUR 10bn). “This must be paid by companies, families, and the Hungarian state; it is not right,” he said.

Dömötör did not talk about Hungary’s energy giant, MOL, which had a record year in 2022 despite the Hungarian government’s excess profit tax. Topping both the company’s projectiles and what the experts waited for, MOL realized a record-high USD 4.7 billion profit.