Gas prices skyrocket and there’s no help in sight, we’re told, given Russia’s catastrophic invasion of Ukraine. But novelist and horror expert Stephen King, who has been tweeting support of Ukraine and horror at Vladimir Putin, thinks there is help available. The American consumer just isn’t receiving that help.
King’s belief? The oil companies could help Americans, King says, by “bearing part of the gas price burden.” But they won’t because, as King contends, they are “amoral.”
Note that he didn’t say immoral. Rather King points out that corporations aren’t built to act ethically, but to make profits –and that, by design, corporate decisions are made primarily to benefit shareholders. If an ethical stand happens to comport with a profitable initiative, then that’s a happy circumstance. But that’s as far as it goes. (See climate change: greenwashing.)
Don’t expect the oil companies to bear part of the gas price burden.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) March 11, 2022
They won’t.
They could, but they won’t.
They are amoral.
Is King right? Could oil companies help offset the current price suffering? CNBC reported that “a surge in global gas markets through the final months of 2021, coupled with an oil price rally to seven-year highs, has seen the world’s largest fossil fuel giants rake in bumper revenues.”
The report also said that BP, in particular, “reported a massive upswing in full-year net profit, its highest in eight years” — approximately $12.5 billion.
Before jumping to conclusions based on those figures, however, which makes the oil giants seem boundlessly flush, it’s notable that BP took a $5.7 billion loss the previous year.
Yet could these companies help with prices, as King suggests? Probably. BP had said it “intends to deliver a further $1.5 billion in share buybacks” in 2022. But is it the responsibility of the oil companies to provide relief?
Much of the substance of arguments in favor of more corporate concern targets the substantial government subsidies the oil giants receive, which — in this line of thinking — makes them not strictly autonomous capitalist actors, but taxpayer-enabled entities.
