Thursday 28 April 2011

Shell’s profits up as BP’s drop

Oil giant Shell announced its earnings were up today, a day after their rivals BP published its own quarterly profits were down.

Royal Dutch Shell's first quarter earnings for 2011 were $6.9 billion (£4.1bn) compared with $4.9 billion a year ago.

Shell puts its success down to new projects in the Netherlands and Qatar, new asset sales and cost saving measures.

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Executive Peter Voser said: "We are making good progress against our targets, to deliver a more competitive performance."

On Wednesday BP reported earnings at $5.5billion, a slight drop compared with last year's quarterly figure of $5.6billion.

BP's poorer performance has been attributed to costs linked to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill clean up, on which it has spent more than $13 billion.