BP's profit surged to $2.1bn (£1.5bn) in the fourth quarter from $400m a year earlier as the oil company gained from rising production.


Underlying replacement cost profit for the three months to the end of December beat expectations as BP increased production at its upstream business. Profit from refining also surged to help the group result outstrip analysts' average forecast of $1.9bn.

Profit before interest and tax in the fourth quarter from exploration and production of oil and gas, known as the upstream business, increased more than five times to $2.2bn from $400m a year earlier. At the downstream business, which includes refining and chemicals, profit jumped to $1.5bn from $877m.

BP attributed upstream's improvement to a 12% increase in production helped by seven new projects. It said the performance was the highest since the year of the giant Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010.

For the full year profit more than doubled to $6.2bn from $2.6bn. Bob Dudley, BP's chief executive, said the results showed the company emerging from a gruelling period that started with the Gulf of Mexico spill, which has cost it more than $60bn, and a collapse in the oil price from 2014.

Dudley said: "2017 was one of the strongest years in BP's recent history. We delivered operationally and financially, with very strong earnings in the downstream, upstream production up 12%, and our finances rebalanced. And we did all this while maintaining safe and reliable operations.

"We enter the second year of our five-year plan with real momentum, increasingly confident that we can continue to deliver growth across our business, improving cash flows and returns for shareholders out to 2021 and beyond."

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