LNG Income Lifts Shell
From Business Day
By Eduard Gismatullin
ROYAL Dutch Shell’s third-quarter profit expanded after Europe’s biggest oil company generated increased earnings from liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Earnings “benefited from the increased contribution from integrated gas, which included an additional dividend from an LNG venture”, Shell said on Thursday. LNG sales gained 4% to 4.97-million tons from a year ago, mainly reflecting the contribution from the Pluto project in Australia.
Net income rose to $7.14bn from $6.98bn a year earlier, Shell said. Excluding one-time items and inventory changes, profit was $6.6bn.
Shell, which expects for the first time to pump more gas than crude this year, is expanding LNG projects on rising demand from Asia. It is the world’s largest supplier of the fuel and has interests in about a quarter of the LNG ships in operation.
“Although production volumes were relatively flat, the company again demonstrated very strong cash-flow generation in spite of headwinds with US gas prices,” said Richard Griffith, an analyst at Oriel Securities in London.
