BP has pleased investors with forecast-beating quarterly profit.
It also announced an increased dividend, plus plans for additional asset sales, and a promise to limit spending.
That meets the desires of shareholders in the sector who are worried about rising costs hitting their returns and want spending controlled and spare cash paid back to them.
“The stockmarket doesn’t want the oil majors to spend money. Instead, investors want their cash back. And BP has obliged,” said analyst Neill Morton of Investec.
Rosneft, the Kremlin-controlled firm into which BP folded its Russian business last year in exchange for an almost twenty percent stake, accounted for over a quarter of its profit in the quarter.
