BP RETURNED to profitability with better than expected third-quarter profit, prompting the oil giant to raise its dividend. “Overall this is a much better result than the poor second quarter,” said Stuart Joyner, an analyst at Investec in London.

The oil and gas company posted earnings of $5.4 billion (€4.16 billion) for the three months ending on September 30th. That compared with a loss of $1.4 billion in the previous quarter, when the company took writedowns on the value of its US refineries and other assets. It was also a slight improvement on the $5 billion BP earned in last year’s third quarter.

The company said it was raising its quarterly dividend by more than 12 per cent, to 14.4 cents a share. The company’s share price rose more than 5 per cent in morning trading in London.

Two years after taking over as chief executive in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico disaster, Bob Dudley appears to be putting his stamp on the company. He has said from the beginning that he wanted to use the oil spill as an opportunity to streamline BP into more of a high-risk, high-reward exploration and production company. For instance, BP said that during the three-month period it had reached agreements to sell $11 billion in assets, bringing its total asset sales to $35 billion since the beginning of 2010. That is close to BP’s target of $38 billion by the end of next year.

The most recent sell-off was a $2.5 billion agreement to sell the Texas City, Texas, refinery – where an explosion killed 15 people in 2005 – to Marathon Petroleum for $2.5 billion.

Not included in those calculations is Mr Dudley’s boldest move: the recent agreement to sell BP’s 50 per cent share of its Russian affiliate TNK-BP. In that complex transaction, BP is to receive $12.3 billion in cash and a 19.75 per cent stake in Rosneft, the Russian national oil company. The transaction has been valued at about $27 billion.

Mr Dudley said that the oil giant planned to substantially increase exploration drilling, moving to 15-25 wells per year from nine currently.

This year BP is drilling in Brazil, Angola and Namibia. Mr Dudley said that the changes “created a strong foundation for our future”. – (New York Times)