Shell hits over €2m per hour in profits

OIL giant Shell said yesterday it was banking over €2 million an hour in profits, as it almost bettered its record 2004 haul in the space of just nine months.

Surging oil prices helped generate profits of $17.55 billion (€14.47 billion) between January and September compared with $17.6bn (€14.5bn) in the whole of 2004.

The performance was spurred by one-off gains on assets sales and in spite of lost production and rig damage in hurricane season.

Shell said production in 2005 would be about 3.5 million barrels of oil a day.

The cost of repairing hurricane damage to rigs and refineries would be approximately $350m (€288m) after tax, although Shell said much of this should be covered by insurance.

Quarterly profits of $7.37bn (€6.07bn) for Shell are higher than the $4.4bn (€3.6bn) reported by rival BP earlier this week.

It means Shell has hit its target of selling between $12bn (€9.8bn) and $15bn (€12.3bn) of assets this year ahead of schedule.

Chief executive Jeroen van der Veer said: "Our operational performance is paying off with good results."

Even if production had not been disrupted by the hurricanes, Shell conceded it would not have matched its output for last year.

Although daily output of 3.21 million barrels was behind last year, Shell said higher oil and gas prices meant earnings from exploration and production more than doubled to $4.98bn (€4.1bn) in the third quarter.

Shell added that its production in the Gulf was still less than half the levels before the hurricane struck and its Mars platform was unlikely to become fully operational again until after June next year.