OIL giant BP has cheered one of the strongest years in the company's recent history after a hike in the cost of crude helped annual profits more than double.
The energy giant saw underlying replacement cost profit - BP's preferred income measure - soar to $6.2 billion (£4.4 billion) for 2017, up from $2.6 billion (£1.9 billion) the year before.
On a fourth-quarter basis, BP chalked up another rise at $2.1 billion (£1.5 billion), climbing from $400 million (£286.2 million) over the same three-month period in 2016
BP is among a string of oil majors benefiting from climbing prices, having seen Brent crude hit $70 per barrel last month - its highest level in more than three years.
Group chief executive Bob Dudley said: "2017 was one of the strongest years in BP's recent history.
"We delivered operationally and financially, with very strong earnings in the downstream, upstream production up 12%, and our finances rebalanced.
"We enter the second year of our five-year plan with real momentum, increasingly confident that we can continue to deliver growth across our business, improving cash flows and returns for shareholders out to 2021 and beyond."
The group said its 2017 performance "reflected higher oil prices" and a $163 million (£116.6 million) boost from an out-of-court settlement between Sistema, Sistema-Invest and Rosneft subsidiary Bashneft.
BP, which joined Shell in beating analysts' earning's forecasts, also unveiled brighter overall profits for the year at $3.4 billion (£2.4 billion), up from $115 million (£82 million) in 2016.
However, the FTSE 100 firm posted a replacement cost (RC) loss for the fourth quarter at $583 million (£417 million), sinking from a $72 million (£51.5 million) profit during 2016.
Payments linked to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill hit $300 million (£214.6 million) in the fourth quarter, pushing the total bill for 2017 to $5.2 billion (£3.7 billion).
BP, which has seen its share price recover broadly in line with global energy prices, said earnings from its downstream were "very strong", up 24% to $7 billion (£5 billion) on an underlying RC cost profit basis.
It said oil and gas production was bolstered by seven major projects coming on line, helping upstream production lift 12% over the period.
Brian Gilvary, BP's chief financial officer, said: "We had strong delivery and growth across BP in 2017.
"The full-year underlying result was more than double a year earlier, our organic cash flows are back in balance and our financial frame remains resilient."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here