BP profit beats forecasts on record oil and trading

By Tom Bergin

LONDON (Reuters) - BP (BP.L) beat forecasts on Tuesday with a 48 percent leap in first-quarter profits to $6.6 billion (3.3 billion pounds), helped by record oil prices and strong profits from trading in energy markets.

The results raised investor hopes Chief Executive Tony Hayward's restructuring of the world's third-largest non government-controlled oil company by market capitalisation was working, pushing BP's shares up nearly 5 percent.

"The figures are very good," Tony Shepard, oil analyst at Charles Stanley said.

BP's $6.59 billion first quarter replacement cost profit, which strips out the impact of changes in the value of fuel inventories, included a net non-operating gain of $96 million.

The "clean" RC result, the figure judged by analysts to be the best measure of underlying performance, was $6.49 billion, ahead of an average forecast of $5.31 billion from a Reuters poll of 9 analysts.

The results echo the forecast-beating profits reported by Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) on Tuesday.

The main driver of BP's earnings was its core oil and gas production unit, which benefited from oil prices which broke the $100/barrel barrier in the quarter, although output was flat at 3.913 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd).

Output would have risen 5 percent, BP said, if it were not for the production sharing contracts it has with resource-holders, which reduce the amount of oil BP receives from projects when oil prices rise.