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Oil giant BP sees profits halve to £780m for Q3

One of the world’s seven ‘supermajor’ oil and gas companies, BP has reported a replacement cost profit of $1.2bn (£780m) in the three months to the end of September, compared with $2.4bn for the same period last year.

The UK oil giant today reported results for the third quarter of 2015 and set out a medium-term financial frame to balance cash flows by 2017 at around $60 per barrel.

BP reported underlying replacement cost profit of $1.8 billion for the quarter, compared with $1.3 billion for the previous quarter and $3.0 billion for the third quarter of 2014.

Compared with a year earlier, the result primarily showed the impact of sharply lower oil and gas prices but also the benefits of a continuing strong downstream environment and performance and steadily lower cash costs throughout the Group.

Group chief executive Bob Dudley and chief financial officer Brian Gilvary will later today describe to investors the company’s response to lower oil prices and how it expects to balance its organic sources and uses of cash by 2017 in an around-$60 per barrel Brent oil price environment. They will also provide an update on BP’s major projects progressing over the next few years.

Bob Dudley said: “Last year, we acted decisively to reset BP for a sustained period of lower oil prices and the results are coming through well. We are now in action to rebalance our financial framework in this new price environment.

“And I am confident that BP’s strong and well-balanced portfolio of businesses and projects gives us the ability to grow value into the future. All of this underpins our strong priority of sustaining our dividend and then growing free cash flow and shareholder distributions over the long term.”

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