Royal Dutch Shell reported an 8 per cent drop in third-quarter profit as oil and gas production and refining margins fell.
Shell said today that its current cost of supply (CCS) net profit, which excludes changes in the value of fuel inventories, fell to $6.39 billion.
The underlying result beat all forecasts, however, and Shell's shares opened higher after the results, trading up 0.7 per cent at 2,070 pence, slightly outperforming a 0.5 per cent rise in the DJ Stoxx European oil and gas sector index.
Shell's result was partly due to a 4 per cent fall in hydrocarbons production to 3.137 million barrels of oil equivalent per day - just ahead of analysts' forecasts.
Production was hit after Shell was forced to sell control of its largest project, Sakhalin-2 in Russia, to state gas monopoly Gazprom, and natural field decline was not matched by new start-ups.
The world's second-largest non government-controlled oil company by market capitalisation said output of crude - typically oil and gas companies' highest margin business - fell 9 per cent.
Excluding a gain of $265 million related to one-off tax impacts, Shell's underlying third-quarter net profit fell 13 per cent to $6.13 billion.