"We're making money"

The CEO of Portuguese energy group Galp, Andy Brown, acknowledges that the company is profiting through price hikes due to the Russian-Ukrainian war.

Acknowledging that the energy sector is as troubled as he has ever witnessed in his three and a half decades in the business, Galp Energia's CEO told CNN Portugal, "we are making money... because we produce oil" and pointed to rising prices due to the war.

Andy Brown, said, however, that the group's profits come from other activities such as refining, and not precisely from fuel price margins, as one would expect from "opportunism."

"We are not profiting by raising [fuel] prices in an opportunistic way. We don't do it that way, that's not how we act," he said.

Fuel prices have been on a steep rise in recent months, particularly since the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Since then, and after several ups and downs, oil has risen on international markets by about 14%.