A letter from Berlin, Madrid and Rome reopens a tax case closed two years ago. EL7 data show that the market itself treats these profits as a temporary windfall.
Six European countries — Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland and Austria — have requested that a Windfall Tax on oil companies be placed on the agenda of the EU finance ministers' meeting in Dublin on 18–19 September. The request followed the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which drove Brent from 72.87 dollars a barrel on the eve of the war in late February to a peak of 115.89 dollars on 8 March, and left it at 91.44 dollars today, according to EL7 data. The six major companies — ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, TotalEnergies, BP and Eni — reported Adjusted Earnings, meaning earnings excluding non-recurring items. Their combined earnings reached around 50.8 billion dollars in Q2 alone, exceeding Oxfam's 45 billion forecast. The precedent is the Solidarity Contribution. The EU imposed it in 2022 and collected 26.15 billion euros — slightly above target. But the 2026 track remains at the first of five stations, and Germany's coalition is itself divided. The irony captured by EL7 scores: the valuation factor is high for five of the six companies despite record profits — meaning the market already prices their earnings as non-repeatable, the same premise on which the tax is based.
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