Shell profits beat BP at £1.1m an hour

Shell today became the second oil giant to announce a profits bonanza from soaring oil prices.

The group made a quarterly profit of $4.41 billion (£2.4 billion), equivalent to more than £1.1 million an hour or £18,000 a minute.

The profit, one of the biggest ever made by a British company in a threemonth period, exceeded even the £2.1 billion announced by rival BP on Tuesday. It is also 70 per cent higher than the profit made by Shell in the same period last year.

The large profit, boosted by oil prices which have soared by two-thirds this year to $51 a barrel, will reignite claims that oil companies are profiteering at the expense of motorists, with petrol prices rising by 10 per cent this year to an average of £4 a gallon.

The oil companies say they only make a "minuscule" profit from the petrol sold to drivers.

Shell's huge profit is a big boost for the company after one of the most troubled periods in its history. This year the Anglo-Dutch group sent its shares tumbling by revealing that it had overstated its oil reserves by a fifth.

The admission led to the resignation of chairman Sir Philip Watts and one of his top executives and a huge internal review of the company's structure.