Shell's third quarter report is out! Net loss of US$447 million

London reported on October 29 that Royal Dutch Shell announced a third-quarter net loss on Thursday, as the huge amount of money written off by the energy giant offset the impact of soaring oil prices.

Shell said that after writing off US$5.2 billion in assets related to commodity derivatives, its after-tax loss reached US$447 million in the three months to the end of September.

Excluding expenses, adjusted earnings soared to US$4.13 billion from US$955 million in the third quarter of 2020. Earlier this month, the company had warned that the recent Hurricane Ida would cause about $400 million in economic losses.

Shell said the adjusted earnings benefited from rising oil and gas prices. Energy prices have soared in the past year, pushing up inflation, which may put pressure on the global economic recovery.

Shell CEO Ben van Beurden stated that the company "created a record cash flow in the third quarter and maintained capital discipline."

Like its competitors, Shell also suffered huge losses in 2020 due to the sharp cuts in energy demand and prices due to the coronavirus pandemic. Due to factory closures and grounding of aircraft, Shell last year had a net loss of US$21.7 billion.

This caused the group to lay off thousands of jobs, which also reflects the situation of British competitor bp.

After the blockade began to spread at the end of the first quarter of last year, oil prices fell sharply and even briefly turned negative.

Since then, oil prices rebounded sharply, and the benchmark North Sea Brent crude oil contract price was around US$85 per barrel.

Natural gas and electricity prices have also risen sharply in recent months, increasing the income of energy giants, but putting pressure on corporate costs and personal consumption capacity.