Shell (NYSE: SHEL) on Thursday reported consensus-beating earnings for the first quarter as the war in Iran drove an oil price surge and boosted trading profits at the UK-based supermajor.
Shell reported adjusted earnings of $6.9 billion for the first quarter of 2026, well ahead of the $6.1-$6.3 billion range expected by analysts.
The company attributed the earnings bump to higher realized liquids prices and significantly higher trading amid unprecedented market volatility in the latter part of the quarter. Shell thus joins the other European oil and gas majors in raking in windfall trading profits fueled by the Middle East crisis.
Shell last month guided for exceptional trading profits, saying it expects its adjusted earnings in marketing and oil trading for the first quarter to be “significantly higher”.
Going forward, Shell slashed its LNG and liquefaction production outlook for the second quarter to reflect volumes lost in Qatar, where the company has stakes in QatarEnergy’s LNG production.
The supermajor reduced the pace of the quarterly share buyback program to $3 billion from $3.5 billion, but lifted its dividend by 5% to $0.3906 per share.
“Today, consistent with our value driven capital allocation philosophy, we are rebalancing our shareholder distributions, with a $3 billion share buyback programme for the next 3 months and a 5% increase in the dividend, in line with our existing 40-50% of CFFO distribution policy,” chief executive officer Wael Sawan said in a statement.
Shell’s earnings beat follows last week’s announcements from BP and TotalEnergies, which also posted strong first-quarter results on the back of soaring commodity prices and higher trading profits.
BP more than doubled its profit for the first quarter from a year earlier as oil prices jumped and oil trading boomed amid the war in the Middle East.
TotalEnergies, for its part, raised its interim dividend by 6% as first-quarter earnings jumped by 30% from a year earlier, pushed up by the spike in oil prices and very strong oil trading results in the wake of the Iran war.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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