BP reported $3.2bn in profit between January and March, more than double the $1.38bn it made in the same period a year earlier, and said the figure was its first results since the Iran war began on 28 February.
The gain was driven largely by a jump in its customers and products division — which includes its oil trading unit — where profits surged to $2.5bn from $103m a year ago. The company also cited a rise in oil prices, with Brent crude trading at about $110 a barrel compared with roughly $73 before the Iran war began.
Meg O'Neill, who took over as chief executive at the beginning of April after Murray Auchincloss left the role after less than two years, framed the results against a backdrop of regional instability. She said the company was operating "at a time when our industry is operating in an environment of conflict and complexity" and that BP was "working with customers and governments to get fuel where it's needed, helping minimize disruption and the impact it can have on people's lives."
BP said its upstream production was flat in the quarter, but cautioned that production in the second quarter — April to June — was expected to be lower partly because of disruption in the Middle East. The company pointed to the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which usually carries about 20% of global supplies of oil and liquid natural gas, as a central factor behind market upheaval.
Analysts and observers urged caution in reading the headline number as a straight signal of stronger output. "There are other things going on and obviously it's a pretty uncertain world at the moment," said Charles Hall, summarizing the wider volatility that sits behind the quarterly snapshot.
Environmental groups seized on the figures to criticise the scale of the profits amid higher consumer energy costs. Mike Childs said: "Just as we saw in 2022 following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, fossil fuel giants are quids-in when global instability drastically inflates fuel prices." He added: "But again, it's ordinary people who pay the price when soaring energy prices threaten to plunge the UK into an even deeper cost of living crisis." The government energy price cap currently protects most UK household gas and electricity bills for the moment, BP acknowledged as part of the context for public concern.
The numbers underline how BP's trading and refining operations can swing quarterly results far more than changes in oil output. The company described the performance of its oil trading business in the quarter as "exceptional," and the scale of the turnaround in customers and products is the clearest proof of that statement: a move from $103m to $2.5bn in a year.
Yet the results also contain a contradiction: BP posted much higher profits while upstream production remained flat, and it warned that output would likely fall in the current quarter because of Middle East disruption. Brent's rise from about $73 to roughly $110 a barrel since the Iran war began is the price mechanism that links those two facts — higher commodity prices can lift trading and product margins even when field production does not increase.
The change at the top of BP's management adds another layer. Meg O'Neill arrived as chief executive at the beginning of April and succeeds a leader who left after less than two years. That makes these first results under O'Neill’s watch a near-term test of her opening argument that the company must manage supply, customers and governments in an environment marked by conflict and complexity.
BP's figures, the company's warning of lower second-quarter production, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the jump in Brent crude together sharpen the immediate challenge: steering fuel to where it's needed while navigating markets that can hand big gains to trading arms and big costs to consumers. How O'Neill balances those pressures will define her early days in charge and shape whether the gains on the ledger translate into what she called practical work to "help minimize disruption and the impact it can have on people's lives."
