Can we stop BP profiting from war?

BP made $3.2 billion in the first three months of 2026, which was more than double its profit from the same period last year. It did not achieve this by finding new oil or selling more of it. It did it by trading oil contracts. In other words: by betting on war. And your energy bill paid for it.

What is actually happening:

• In 2025, around 383 million oil trades were recorded in the UK, each covering roughly 1,000 barrels of oil at over $100 a barrel
• The total value of those contracts runs into the tens of trillions of pounds, dwarfing the value of all UK share trading
• The post-Ukraine energy price spike that devastated household budgets was not caused by a gas shortage; it was caused by financial speculation of this sort, and it is happening again

The tools to control the damage from this trading already exist, but the government just refuses to use them:

• • The London Stock Exchange already charges 0.5% Stamp Duty on share trades, raising over £4 billion a year. A financial transaction tax on oil trading could work in exactly the same way and potentially raise more money.
  • Alternatively, a tax of this sort could, as Nobel Laureate James Tobin, who proposed it in the 1970s, said, "throw sand in the wheels" of the speculative machine, and that is what is needed. 
  • Even a fraction of a per cent on commodity trades such as those in oil, wheat, rice, and soybeans would reduce trading volumes, cut price volatility, and protect household budgets

• • A windfall tax on wartime trading profits would claw back what BP and others are extracting from the crisis

This is not complicated. It is a political choice to permit wartime profiteering. And it is now a necessary political choice to stop it.