Shell fourth-quarter profits tripled on higher prices, output

[OhioChick]

Source: AP

Thursday, February 03, 2011, 2:55 PM

AMSTERDAM -- Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Europe's largest oil company, on Thursday reported that fourth quarter profit more than tripled from a year earlier as oil prices rose and the company boosted production.

In addition, Shell's refining operations reversed losses from a year earlier to make a healthy profit, though not as much as analysts had expected.

Fourth quarter net profit was $6.79 billion, up from $1.96 billion in the same period a year earlier. The figure included net one-time gains of $1.59 billion, notably from the sale of shares in Australia's Woodside Petroleum, compared with net charges of $1.60 billion in the same period a year earlier due to restructuring at Shell's refining operations.

Revenue rose 24 percent to $100 billion. Production was up 5.3 percent to 3.5 million of barrels of oil per day, reflecting heavy investment in new capacity Shell has made in recent years, while global oil prices were 15 percent higher on average.

Read more: http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2011/02/shell_fourth-quarter_profits_t.html

[xchrom]

1. Recommend

[Newest Reality]

2. As you stop children ... what's that sound?

I can hear that incredible sucking sound grow louder across the land as I sit with my cup of coffee pondering the economic debacle that we call modern life.

I ponder a new, incredibly adaptive and resilient life-form that has emerged slow, and stealthy amongst us. Fiddlesticks, we even treat it like a person now. This amazing creature functions like a cross between an ant colony and a vampire bat. It initially presents some form of symbiotic function whereby it captures all the resources and produces many essential and then many non-essential goods for it hosts to consume. Then, later in its life-cycle, it morphs into the fully formed adult parasite that reverses the equation and begins to suck the bewildered, often clueless hosts dry, turning them into drugged-out, brainwashed drones that are either assimilated to proliferate this species. Those who are not useful to this creature's survival are cast-out of the corporate nests and habits to be fodder for the collective exploitation it thrives on, or to die as members of the unprofitable underclass, in squalor or in the profitable prisons of this raging hive-minded entity.

Once upon a time, this multi-faceted, tentacle-laden creature, before it was almost ubiquitous in its hunting territories, injected its venomous ideology into its hosts, which served to alter their systems and dilute their willpower and insights as to what was taking place and what the gradual and total infestation would mean for them. Part of the syndrome included a belief that the success of the stock market indicate the success of the host. The venom worked will and the stings were repeated again and again for decades. That, combined with the sub rosa activities of the beast and its habitually secretive and deceptive behaviors allowed it to change and transform behind its chameleon-like skin. The people whom the parasite had enveloped with its corrosive, but rather attractive and desirable, bile suffered from delayed realizations. While they thought one thing was true, the beast was already operating in a different reality it had created.

Now, the hosts are having a hard time with the infestation and being slowly bled of all they had or worked for. The beast has mitigated the negative impact of cultural, cognitive dissonance by secreting and dispensing powerful psychotropic chemicals that help them cope and concede to its tactical infestation. Combined with the beast's seemingly endless emissions of visions and words that it projects via a complex combination of transmission and reception devices, its entertainments hypnotically keep the hosts from considering its capture or extermination.

As it thrives and grows, and its impact becomes obvious and unavoidable and who, who can stop the beast or make war with it? What kind of bug spray do you use to eliminate that kind of pestilence?

[cutlassmama]

3. Their profits are up yet food prices are going to rise due to rising gas

prices. Let the masses starve while they make those obscene profits.

[safeinOhio]

4. and their stock dropped

3% on the news?