Shell profits down nearly a third after drop in gas prices
Europe’s tumbling gas prices caused profits at Shell to slump by almost a third in the last quarter after denting the earnings in its gas trading business.Gas prices in Europe fell by almost a fifth between April and June this year after a sudden ceasefire forged between Iran and Israel eased fears that gas deliveries via the strait of Hormuz might be disrupted by conflict.The biggest weekly slump in gas prices in almost two years helped to dent Shell’s adjusted earnings for the second quarter, which fell by almost a third from last year to $4.26bn (£3.22bn).
However, profits at Europe’s largest fossil fuel company were still higher than City forecasts, which had predicted a larger drop in profits to $3.7bn, allowing Shell to continue handing out bumper payouts to its shareholders.Shell attributed the profit drop to “lower trading and optimisation margins” as well as lower prices for oil and gas.In addition to the fall in European gas prices, Brent crude was trading below $68 a barrel at the end of the quarter, down sharply from more than $86 a barrel a year earlier.Despite the fall in profits and a rise in debt, Shell is continuing to pump money back to its investors through share buyback schemes.
It announced it would spend $3,5bn buying back shares in the third quarter of the year,Shell’s chief executive, Wael Sawan, said the company had delivered a strong operational performance in “a less favourable macro environment”,Gas prices were rocked by the Middle East conflict and were also weaker after a slump in Chinese energy demand amid fears that Donald Trump’s trade tariffs would hinder its economic growth,Lower demand for gas in China meant more shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the global market were available to European buyers, which helped to cool market prices.
The weaker gas prices, although challenging for Shell, have meant lower bills for households,In the UK, the government’s energy price cap fell by 7% from July and was expected to remain at a similar level from September, according to forecasts,Sawan told CNBC: “The tricky thing was, it was non-fundamentals-based volatility,And what I mean by that is this wasn’t fundamental changes to supply demand balances,This was not a change to physical commodity flows.
This was really sort of paper-induced volatility, and that is not what we typically trade into,”Sign up to Business TodayGet set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morningafter newsletter promotionDerren Nathan, the head of equity research at the investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown, said a recent rise in oil prices should help Shell’s financial performance improve in the third quarter of the year,“Shell’s second-quarter earnings hit a bit of an oil patch, with lower commodity prices, a weaker trading environment and unplanned downtime at its chemical plants all playing their part,” he said,Shell’s profits continue to anger environmental campaigners, after the company last year rolled back decarbonisation targets,Robin Wells, the director of Fossil Free London, a campaign group that protested outside Shell’s headquarters on Wednesday night, said: “We are now in a new normal of record-breaking heat, created by corporations like Shell.
This will mean devastation and mass loss of human life.Climate scientists have warned us that this new normal will spell the end of human civilisation by 2100.It’s time for destruction to stop raising billions in profit.”
Zuckerberg claims ‘superintelligence is now in sight’ as Meta lavishes billions on AI
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YouTube to gauge US users’ ages with AI after UK and Australia add age checks
YouTube announced on Tuesday that it will begin to use artificial intelligence to estimate the ages of users in the US, in order to show them age-appropriate content.The rollout of the new feature comes one day after Australia’s government announced it would ban children under 16 from using YouTube and less than a week after the UK implemented sweeping age checks on content on social networks.YouTube’s AI age verification on its home turf indicates it is putting into place a form of compliance with the Australian and UK requirements, despite its persistent opposition to age-check requirements.“Over the next few weeks, we’ll begin to roll out machine learning to a small set of users in the US to estimate their age, so that teens are treated as teens and adults as adults,” wrote James Beser, director of product management for YouTube Youth, in a blogpost titled Extending our built-in protections to more teens on YouTube.YouTube was promised an exemption from Australia’s social media ban last year by the then communications minister, but the Australian government said on Monday that the platform would, in fact, be included in the country’s ban on children under 16 using social networks
UK online safety law leads to 5m extra age checks a day for pornography sites
Five million extra online age checks a day are being carried out in the UK since the introduction of age-gating for pornography sites, according to new data.The Age Verification Providers Association (AVPA) said there had been a sharp increase in additional age checks in the UK since Friday, when age verification became mandatory for accessing pornography under the Online Safety Act.“As a result of new codes under the Online Safety Act coming into force on Friday, we have seen an additional 5m age checks on a daily basis, as UK-based internet users seek to access sites that are age-restricted,” said Iain Corby, the executive director of the AVPA.The UK has also seen a surge in popularity of virtual private networks, which obscure a user’s real location and thus allow them to access sites blocked in their own country. Four of the top five free apps on the Apple download store in the UK are VPN apps, with Proton, the most popular, reporting a 1,800% increase in downloads
People in the UK: have you been the victim of phone theft recently?
According to data compiled by an insurance firm, nearly two in every five mobile phones stolen in Europe are taken in the UK. Claims made to the American insurance company SquareTrade showed 39% of all phone thefts across the company’s 12 European markets were in Britain.The data revealed that phone theft claims in the UK had increased by 425% since June 2021 and 42% of phone thefts in the UK occurred in London.We’d like to hear from people who have been the victim of phone theft in the UK in the last six months? Has your phone been snatched out of your hands? What happened next and how easy was it to secure your data and accounts? Did you report it to the police? Has it changed your behaviour using your phone or sense of safety on the streets? Why do you think that the UK is the phone theft capital of Europe.You can tell us if you have been the victim of phone theft in the UK by filling in the form below
UK viewers: are you watching YouTube on your TV more than other channels?
YouTube has become popular to watch on TV with children and older people choosing the video platform when they first switch on their televisions.Viewers aged 55 and over watched almost twice as much YouTube than they did in 2023, with 42% of them watching on a TV. The platform is also the most popular first TV destination for generation Alpha viewers, aged four to 15.We’d like to hear from people who watch YouTube on their TV more than other channels. When and why did your watching habits change and how does it differ to what you grew up with? What are your favourite YouTube shows and why?You can tell us why you watch YouTube more than other broadcast channels on your TV by filling in the form below
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