Ace Business Desk – There is ongoing coverage – including on the frontpage of the Daily Mirror – of the quarterly profits announced by Shell yesterday by Holly Williams, The Press Association:

The Press Association reports that campaigners have criticised the “profit haul”, which saw the company announce earnings of $10.81bn (£8.12bn), up from $5.43bn (£4.08bn) a year earlier.

The newswire says Shell’s announcement came after the UK chancellor “chose not to increase windfall taxes on oil and gas firms in Wednesday’s budget”, despite calls to tap the sector’s “mammoth” profits to help pay for household energy support. It continues that Shell’s chief financial officer called on the government to approve the Rosebank oil field, a project part-owned by Shell.

A separate Daily Mirror article covers analysis by Greenpeace which calculates that CEO Wael Sawan boss has “enjoyed a £4.7m boost” since the start of the Iran war, as the company has earned “£60,000 a minute”. 

BP’s profits, meanwhile, have surged to a “new record”, with the company this morning reporting adjusted quarterly profits of $8.5bn – a near-quadrupling since this time last year, according to the Financial Times. The newspaper notes BP’s results follow “bumper earnings at European rivals Shell, TotalEnergies, Eni and Repsol which have increased shareholder payouts as the industry enjoys its strongest profits since the energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022”.

A separate Financial Times article notes that “the higher payouts are the first sign of how Europe’s oil companies intend to spend the billions of dollars of additional profits”. It adds that analysts also expect oil majors to use the windfall to “bolster their oil and gas reserves and eventually fund more mergers and acquisitions in the sector”.

MORE NEWS & VIEWS

• TotalEnergies reported a net profit up 124% year-on-year in the third quarter, reaching $8.3bn, says Le Monde.
• Soaring UK oil prices have already exceeded the UK Office for Budget Responsibility’s “worst-case forecast”, says the Daily Mail.
• Scottish leader John Swinney is under pressure from leaders of opposition parties to set out his position on Rosebank, says the Press Association.
• The Scotsman says the UK government’s messaging on carbon-capture and storage funding for the Acorn project in Scotland has “descended into chaos”.

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