BBC News Review 2022/08/04 Record oil profits -1

Oil companies make record profits while prices for customers rise. This is News review from BBC Learning English.
I’m Neil
and I’m Beth.
Stick with us to the end of the video and you’ll learn vocabulary about making money.
Yes, you will and don’t forget subscribe to our channel, like this video and try the quiz on our website.
Now. Today’s story.
Almost 60 billion dollars in three months. That’s how much profit the world’s five biggest oil companies made in the last
quarter. It comes as energy bills for consumers continue to rise to record levels.
The profits are caused by increasing prices for oil and gas, because of the war in Ukraine, experts say.

You’ve been looking at the headlines. Beth? What’s the vocabulary?
We have ‘profiteering’, ‘laughing all the way to the bank’ and ‘shatter’.

This is News Review from BBC Learning English.

Let’s have a look at our first headline.
This one comes from the Gardian:

BP accused of ‘unfettered profiteering’ as profits triple.

Now the word we are looking at is ‘profiteering’, and there’s a big clue in the first half of that word.
Yep. So the first half of that word is profit. That’s the money that you make when you sell something.
Yea. And the word, profit itself is fairly neutral. There’s nothing negative or positive about the word, profit.
Yeah, that’s right. But profiteering is different. So the activity of profiteering is about unfairly making money. And this is often because the people buying have no choice.
profiteering 不当利得［利益］行為◆希少品または入手困難な物を不当な高値で売るなど
Yes. So people who are critical of the oil companies say that consumers, that’s people like me and you, are being treated unfairly. They don’t understand why these big profits from the il companies are not passed to consumers and why the prices keep going up.
profiteer 暴利を得る［貪る］
And in this headline, it says the profiteering is unfettered. Now that means without limits. So the writer thanks there’s no control over this profit making.
Have you got any other examples of profiteering?
Yep. So, sometimes lenders are accused of profiteering. So people with very little money might be desperate for a loan.
But if these people are only offered very high interest rates, we might say that the lenders are profiteering.
Let’s take a look at that one more time.

profiteering
making large, unfair profits.
That bank is profiteering. A 70% interest rate is too high.