Last Modified: 27 Oct 2005
Source: ITN

Oil giant Shell is making profits of around £1.5 million an hour, results have revealed.

The company has nearly bettered its record 2004 haul in the space of just nine months.

Surging oil prices helped to generate profits of £9.86 billion between January and September compared with £9.88 billion in the whole of 2004.

This performance was also spurred by one-off gains on the sale of assets and was in spite of lost production and damage to rigs from the summer of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico.

Shell said production in 2005 would be about 3.5 million barrels of oil a day, which is at the bottom end of its target laid out earlier this year.

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