Despite the recent share price rally in London's two super majors, the last week has served as a useful reminder that oil prices have so far been unsustainable in 2016. If anything, Royal Dutch Shell (RDSB) appears to have been hit harder than rival BP, as half-year results showed a 65 per cent drop in net income to $2.6bn (£1.98bn), after adjusting for expenses.
This missed consensus analyst estimates, knocking 3 per cent off the shares, and came despite four-and-a-half-months' worth of production from the assets added in the takeover of BG. This caused a 28 per cent boost in volumes to 3.5m barrels of oil equivalent a day in the second quarter, although a $649m net charge in the upstream division due to redundancy and restructuring costs weighed heavily on earnings.