BP has posted an eight-year high in profit while Royal Dutch Shell Plc had its biggest gain since 2005, Bloomberg news reported.
Analysts said numbers posted by the oil giants were grand across the board, despite high crude prices. Crude oil reached $111.80 a barrel in March, and also touched an all-time high of $119.93 this week.
Excluding changes from holding inventories and one-time items, Shell’s profit was $7.85 billion. BP’s profit on the same basis advanced to $6.49 billion. Both numbers were above industry analysts’ predictions.
ConocoPhillips, the third-largest U.S. oil company, said its first-quarter profit rose 17% to $4.14 billion, while ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company, is scheduled to report earnings on May 1 and Chevron Corp. reporting a day after that.
ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips all racked combined record-breaking profits of $72 billion last year, according to Fortune 500 listings released last week. ExxonMobil has $39.5 billion in profits last year, a 9.3% increase over the year earlier. Chevron posted $18.7 billion in profits last year, while ConocoPhillips had $11.9 billion.