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Which angers you more: giant profits for the companies that supply your electricity and gas, or huge losses from bonus-rich bankers who depend on the public's backing?

On Thursday, you get to choose. Royal Bank of Scotland registers a loss somewhat smaller than the £24.1bn last year, while Centrica, owner of the British Gas and Scottish Gas brands, delivers something a bit cheerier for its shareholders.

Formerly a nationalised utility, the energy company at first expanded into all sorts of other utility products, and then retreated.

More recently, it has expanded vertically - not just selling gas into homes, but extracting it from under British waters, and planning to build new power stations, including nuclear.

That expansion into offshore production was boosted by the purchase of Venture Petroleum, a £1bn Scottish company that added to the departure of corporate headquarters.

Centrica Energy, combining Venture with Centrica's existing offshore business in Morecambe Bay and off eastern England, chose to put its divisional headquarters into Aberdeen.

That, it seems, remains the place to retain and recruit the offshore skills, rather than around Windsor HQ.

Taps turned off

Venture's portfolio of offshore fields has added to Centrica's security of supply.

The company, with about 15 million British customers - that's more than half the households in Britain - now has control of more than half the gas it needs.

That security issue was more of a concern when Russia was shutting the taps on its pipeline through Ukraine.

But turning the taps on tanker-loads of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, has diversified supply, and helped bring gas wholesale prices to relatively low levels.

For those who see profiteering, Centrica will have some explaining to do.

But at least it has a defence.

It cut prices by 7% last month, opening up a gap which is reckoned by Ofgem, the industry regulator, to be about £100 in the annual bills levied by competing firms from the average household.

Company sources profess to be puzzled that competitors have not followed with their own cuts.

It may be that other companies hedged against prices rising after the wholesale spikes of the past 18 months, getting caught out when they stabilised.

Regulator's carrot

It may also be that Centrica can afford to squeeze margins on selling fuel, while it makes its money from advancing its army of central heating engineers.

Boiler replacement is particularly big business, as prices rise, the kit becomes more efficient, and it gets financial backing from UK and Scottish governments.

Similarly, these energy companies are incentivised, with regulatory stick as much as carrot, to become increasingly engaged in fuel efficiency measures.

But they also face a tightening of the regulatory screw on prices.

The latest Ofgem analysis of pricing shows the average household customer is delivering a net margin for energy utilities of £105 per year, up from £75 in November.

The difference is the fall in wholesale gas prices, which have not been matched by retail price cuts.

The regulator is talking tough. The Big Six, two of them based in Britain - Centrica and Scottish and Southern - cover 99% of the market.

Five million householders switched provider last year, but that was to one of the dominant players, rather than new competitors.

Micro-power

The options to open up the market include requiring large power generators to trade with small suppliers "on reasonable terms".

Likewise, they could offer better terms to small, independent generators - which could help Scotland's renewable energy as well as domestic micro-generation.

A market could be created by Ofgem, with the Big Six required to put power onto the market.

A market-making agent would post the best bid and offer, providing more liquidity to attract smaller-scale entrants.

Or Centrica and its ilk could find that, having spent all that money on buying Venture Petroleum, its vertical integration could face dis-integration, limiting the extent to which it can supply its own retail business.

Airports in financial fog

Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen airports are important utilities of a different kind. Owning them carries responsibilities.

That's why the annual results from Grupo Ferrovial, the Spanish owners of BAA plc, are notable for completely ignoring its Scottish assets.

On Monday, it published results for its London airports, including Heathrow and Stansted, with Gatwick offloaded in December.

But the results from Madrid on Tuesday suggest the Scottish airports are below the finance director's radar.

Heathrow, it is noted, did well to limit the decline in its traffic to 1.5% - "the smallest decline of all BAA's airports".

That may be true, in that Edinburgh Airport didn't register a decline at all. In its most recent figures, it actually grew numbers through the recession.