HUGE profits declared by oil and gas firms should be channelled towards compensating for the loss and damages suffered by victims of climate change, campaign group Greenpeace has urged.

Following Shell’s announcement last week of its record high profits of £32.2 billion last year, BP is expected to announce record profits of its own tomorrow.

The firm has already announced more than £20bn profit for the first three quarters of last year.

Collectively, energy giants Shell, BP, Chevron, Exxon, and Total are believed to have pocketed almost £166bn in profits last year, said Greenpeace.

Over the past week, activists from the environmental campaign group have staged a series of protests calling on Shell and the wider fossil fuel industry to take responsibility for its part in causing the climate crisis and pay up for the loss and damage that has the worst impact in countries that are the least to blame.

In a statement, Greenpeace said: “At the Cop27 climate talks at Sharm-el-Sheikh in Egypt in November, world leaders agreed there should be a pot of money for loss and damage.

“But it has not yet been agreed how much money should be directed towards it, nor the mechanism for paying.

“There is considerable momentum growing for world leaders to agree to force historically polluting companies like Shell to pay into it.

“To put BP’s first three quarters’ profits into perspective: they amount to seven times the cost of devastation caused by the KwaZulu Natal and Eastern Cape floods in South Africa last year.”