Shell @ MindSay 
LONDON — BP (BP) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA), Europe's two biggest oil producers, posted forecast-busting first-quarter earnings on Tuesday thanks to record crude oil prices that are expected to bolster profits across the industry.
The combined profits of $17 billion reignited calls for a windfall tax on oil profits as consumers struggle to pay for food and fuel.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown suggested that some of those profits should be reinvested in costly exploration for new oil reserves in the North Sea.
BP posted a 63% surge in first-quarter net profit to $7.6 billion, while Shell reported a 25% rise to a record $9.08 billion.
Revenue at BP jumped 44% to $89.2 billion, while sales at Shell soared 55% to $114 billion.
Last week ConocoPhillips (COP) reported a 16% rise in net income to $4.14 billion. Like BP and Shell, the third biggest U.S. producer far outpaced industry expectations. More big profits are expected from the biggest two U.S. companies, ExxonMobil (XOM)and Chevron (CVX), when they report first-quarter earnings later this week.
Crude oil hit $111.80 a barrel during the quarter, while gas jumped an average of 22%. Crude has pushed even higher since, reaching a record $119.93 a barrel this week.
The enormous profit reports from European companies coincided with the end of a two-day refinery strike in Britain that shut off 700,000 barrels of oil per day, brought from the North Sea to a BP plant.
Truck drivers staged a protest in London's Park Lane on Tuesday, blaring their horns to protest a 30% rise in the price of diesel over the past year. A similar protest took place in Washington, D.C. on Monday, and it wasn't the first.
"The price of fuel is becoming something many families are struggling with," said Sheila Ranger, a spokeswoman for the RAC Foundation, a commuter advocacy group. "This will be the last straw for some motorists."
Shell's Chief Financial Officer Peter Voser said oil companies are not to blame.
"We don't understand the oil price at this stage," he said. "The fundamentals will not justify an oil price as we see it at the moment."
Shell's earnings from oil production rose 52% to $5.14 billion, due almost entirely to the price increases. The company said combined production of gas and oil equivalents increased less than 1% to 3.4 million barrels per day, as a 9% rise in gas production outweighed a 6% fall in oil production.
Stripping out the impact of oil inventories that have risen in value, refining profits would have fallen 20%, Shell said.
"It seems that better marketing and trading were able to offset the weak refining environment," analyst Alexandre Weinberg of Petercam.
Shell has invested heavily to improve production after a string of setbacks, including an accounting scandal in 2004. More recently, it has faced attacks on its pipelines in Nigeria and a forced sale of part of its stake in a major project on Russia's Sakhalin Island to a state-run enterprise.
BP's profit follows an even rougher period for the company from production outages, U.S. environmental fines and fraud and the scandal-tinged departure of its chief executive.
Chief Executive Tony Hayward, who took over from John Browne a year ago, has focused on bringing new production and refining capacity on line to improve earnings.
"At last, it appears that BP is beginning to improve its operational performance and this looks set to drive a stronger financial performance in the second half," said Tony Shephard, analyst at Charles Stanley & Co.
BP's closely watched replacement cost profit rose 48% to $6.59 billion, compared with $4.44 billion in the first quarter of 2007. The replacement cost figure is viewed by many analysts as the best measure of an oil company's underlying performance because it excludes changes in the value of crude inventories, measuring the amount it would cost to replace assets at current prices.
The company said refining availability improved for the sixth successive quarter.
"BP is still not firing on all cylinders but its operational turnaround looks to be on track with a strong second half recovery in prospect," said Charles Stanley & Co. analyst Tony Shephard.
Just woke up like 10 - 15 minutes ago. So I guess I missed the time deadline to respond to "girl a" about our plans for Thursday. Besides, it's not like I would have been picked over her other male friend anyway. I mean, how can I show her just how much I care about her, if we really don't spend a lot of time together.
I guess she's losing interest in me. Cause I've been told that I have , no confidence , that I don't care, that I am not understanding, and that I am indecisive. For those of you that know me, is all this really true ? ... I don't believe so.
Anyway, I have plans Thursday to go to the Erie County Fair, with two other friends and her daughter. That's as it stands right now. Although I have to wait till later today, to see exactly what is going to happen tomorrow. Ugh... I hate waiting , but no matter what, I'll be at the fair tomorrow.
What's on tap for today ? Nothing that I know of really. My father wants me to clean out the gutter on the back of our house. For the moment, I keep putting that off. Since he could do it himself, if it was really that important. Other then that, there's really nothing that I know of.
I guess no one wants to do anything with me today. Since I never make plans, ugh... that would involve making a decision. You all know, something I never do. lmao I guess before you can make plans you have to talk to people, and if there's no one to talk to, no plans can be made. How hard is that to understand ? Ugh... how annoying.
Things that may possibly happen ? I may wash my hair sooner or later, dunno if I really wanna. I may go clean the gutter out, I may go to the mall later, or some store. I dunno. I really have nothing going on today. It's just a nice comfy weather day, and a day off with nothing going on.
I am just , getting tired of this, I am patient, I wait for the girl I want to see the light. To figure out on her own that maybe, just maybe, I am not like other guys. I wait for her to choose me. Maybe that's the mistake that I have made every time I try to get a girl to wanna be with me. Cause what happens, is as I wait, other guys come around , and take away , the girl that I wanted. So, the saying is true , "nice guys finish last" , and usually , alone.
What's on my mind ? That doesn't already appear somewhere in this blog. LOL Nothing else really. Oh, a friend told me "rob, why couldn't of you just asked me out" , I guess that's cause we seem to get along better then her and her husband do. Maybe we would have made a better pair? Who know's , all I know , is there's another example of the paragraph before this one.
Ugh... I guess that's my life story so far. I wait , and wait, and then what I was waiting for, is taken away. Sometimes, forever.
I truly hate myself for being this way, but I know no other way of being. It's me. It's my protective turtle like shell that keeps my heart from getting crushed like a bug. Just sometimes a needle makes it though, and for one moment, I hurt.
~ Turtle power ? 
I'd never seen one of my hermit crabs change their shell until yesterday, and when it was when i was high on two weak pot cookies and a little bit of my own dope that I ate. To best show you what that was like, i'm going to post all of the pictures I took just the way i took them. no cropping, no nothing other than i had to shrink some of them down a little bit. I'm sorry that I don't have the ones from when he first came out of the ground, though. That was amazing. It was like something from a Godzilla movie! lol. Ok then, here's the pics.:P
And one big picture with one of my new crabs (the one in the yellow shell) in the background.
If my reaction time wasn't so slow, i'd have some for you of when Timmy was crawling out of the ground, lol
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