Shell's Q2 net profit falls on lower oil prices

Shell's second-quarter net profit tumbled by almost a third yesterday, dragged down by a drop in oil prices, lower gas trading results and outage-related losses from its chemicals operations, but it still easily beat analysts’ forecasts.

- SHADIA NASRALLA

The oil major, meanwhile, said it would maintain the pace of its share buyback programme at $3.5 billion over the next three months, the 15th consecutive quarter of at least $3 billion.

The company’s shares were up around 1.7% by 3:47 pmin Thailand, outperforming a 0.5% rise in a broader index of European energy companies.

“We definitely saw macro continuing to be challenging on multiple fronts and against definitely a backdrop of geopolitical and economic uncertainty,” Shell's finance chief Sinead Gorman told journalists.

“We saw that knock-on impact on both physical trade flows as well as commodity prices and margins. Despite that, we delivered a robust set of results,” she said.