Shell fined for overcharging household energy bills – live updates

Good morning.

Shell has been fined for charging some households too much for their energy bills in a move that’s likely to stir political backlash over windfalls for major energy companies.

Shell Energy Retail will pay £537,000 for overcharging more than 11,000 price cap customers since the beginning of 2019.

The total amount to be refunded to customers is 106,000, while Shell will also pay £400,000 to Ofgem’s voluntary consumer redress fund and £30,970 in goodwill payments to affected customers.

The error comes as British households grapple with surging energy bills, with Ofgem expected to announce another jump in the price cap to beyond £3,500 tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Shell posted a record profit of $11.5bn (£9.7bn) for the second quarter alone as it cashed in on the boom in wholesale oil and gas prices.

5 things to start your day 

1) How natural gas traders hit the jackpot  Soaring energy prices are making a select group of speculators rich beyond their wildest dreams  

2) Covid-style bailouts for energy bills considered as Government warned of civil unrest  Calls for urgent help to stop the crisis from wiping out swathes of the economy

3) Hospitals, farms and factories at risk of CO2 shortages as last major plant pauses production  Supplies of the carbon dioxide will be curtailed as CF Industries winds down operations at Britain’s last fertiliser plant

4) Atom Bank rushes to defend four-day working week  Challenger bank believes pilot is ‘future of working life’

5) Nicola Sturgeon’s borrowing bill to be lower than England’s for first time in decade  Scotland’s falling deficit could boost the SNP before a second independence referendum

What happened overnight 

Tokyo stocks opened higher this morning, with the benchmark Nikkei 225 index rising 0.2pc and the broader Topix index also up 0.2pc.

Mainland Chinese stocks also opened with gains. The Shanghai Composite Index and the Shenzhen Composite Index on China’s second exchange both climbed 0.3pc.

Coming up today

• Corporate: Hays (full-year results); Amigo Holdings, CRH, Grafton Group, Harbour Energy, Hunting, Macfarlane Group, Puretech Health (interims)
• Economics: GDP (US, Ger), Jackson Hole Symposium (US), core personal consumption expenditures (US), jobless claims (US)