Oil price rise sees BP profits surge

BP HAS reported its best quarterly result for three years after notching up a 71 per cent surge in profits thanks to surging oil prices.

Shares in the oil giant briefly hit their highest level since 2010 as the firm said underlying replacement cost profits jumped to a better-than-expected 2.6 billion US dollars (£1.9bn) for the first three months of 2018, up from 1.5 billion US dollars (£1.1bn) a year earlier.

On a bottom-line basis, profits rose 70 per cent to 2.4 billion US dollars (£1.7bn).

BP said its upstream operations – which cover exploration and production – enjoyed the best quarter since the third quarter of 2014, with underlying profits more than doubling to 3.2 billion US dollars (£2.3bn).

The company’s production rose 6 per cent in the first quarter compared with a year ago.

But the group continued to count the cost of its 2010 Deepwater Horizon tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico, with another 1.6 billion US dollars (£1.2bn) forked out in the first quarter.

This included 1.2 billion US dollars (£873m) for the final payment of its 2012 settlement with the Department of Justice.

During the quarter, BP completed another 200 million US dollars (£146m) worth of divestments as it continues to sell off assets, and kept its guidance for between 2 billion US dollars (£1.5bn) and 3 billion US dollars (£2.2bn) over the full year.