Britain’s oil giant Shell reported on the 28th that it posted a net profit of $11.5 billion in the second quarter.
As oil demand soared and oil prices soared due to the Ukraine war, Shell made the largest quarterly profit despite a one-off loss from the withdrawal of its Russian business.
The U.S. oil company’s accounting method, which does not adjust Russian losses and raw material prices, has a net profit of $16.7 billion, up $5.2 billion.
It recorded a record net profit of $9.1 billion in the previous first quarter, surpassing $20 billion in the first half of last year alone. This means Shell earned more than $100 million in net profit every day during the first half of this year.
International oil prices have risen 140 percent in the past 12 months on a Brent crude basis, with the second quarter average reaching 114 dollars a barrel, especially because of the Ukrainian war.
Shell’s overall net profit could easily exceed $30 billion in the first quarter, exceeding $40 billion.
Two years ago, in 2020, when COVID-19 broke out, Shell took the first cut in 80 years of its history, recording a deficit of $4.3 billion, and the situation improved to a hundred and eighty degrees due to a global economic rebound and soaring international oil prices.
Shell plans to buy back $6 billion in treasury stocks with such huge profits, which has been criticized for attributing profits entirely to the company and shareholders’ benefits and for having no consideration for consumers suffering from soaring oil prices. In the first half alone, this buyback was worth $8.5 billion.
Following Shell, oil refiners such as Total, BP, Exxon Mobil and Sevron are expected to announce record quarterly profits over the course of this week and early next week.
