Profits for British Gas have increased tenfold

According to British Gas, its earnings for 2023 will reach £750 million, a ten-fold rise.

The increase from £72 million in 2022 was brought about by regulator Ofgem enabling it to recoup losses of £500 million it had incurred during Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

When energy prices skyrocketed, oil and gas companies made record profits; nevertheless, suppliers that took on the customers of failing retailers suffered significant losses.

The main firm of British Gas, Centrica, reported a 17% decline in earnings to £2.8 billion.

The energy behemoth, which produces and extracts fossil fuels, reported lower, but still significant, earnings for 2023 than BP and Shell did as a result of the return of oil and petrol prices to 2022 levels.

The cost of gas and electricity has increased for millions of homes in recent years. The primary cause of the UK's growing cost of living is also energy.

Centrica stated that by allowing the energy regulator Ofgem to recoup £500 million in losses, its retail division, British Gas, which serves 7.5 million consumers, generated profits of £750 million.

This resulted from the energy price cap, which was imposed by the Ofgem regulator and included a provision to make up for energy companies' unpaid debt from customers.

When hundreds of small energy providers failed in 2021 owing to a spike in gas prices that rendered their pricing pledges to clients unfulfillable, British Gas and a few other suppliers were blamed for the losses since they took on new customers and upheld existing contracts.

But when it was revealed that debt collectors for British Gas had gone into the homes of vulnerable people in order to force-fit prepayment metres, the energy provider found itself at the focus of a crisis the previous year.

(Sources: bbc.co.uk)