On the same day, Exxon, the largest US oil company, said it earned $4.94 billion in the first quarter of this year, down from 9.1 billion a year earlier, a 46 percent drop. It was the weakest first quarter for the oil giant since 2009.
The cause of the declines for both companies was simple: The average global cost of crude oil has plunged by nearly half since late June 2014, bringing with it the price of gas.
But both Shell and Exxon outperformed analysts’ expectations for the same reason: There was higher global demand for more affordable oil and increased earnings from refining, which became more profitable because the oil needed for the process was less expensive.
“Refining saved the day for Big Oil,” Fadel Gheit, a senior oil company analyst at Oppenheimer & Company in New York, told The New York Times.
Refining Saves The Day For Exxon and Shell | OilPrice.com