Oil-price spiral lifts Woodside

Woodside Petroleum, the Australian producer 34-owned by Royal Dutch Shell, says second-quarter sales jumped 52% thanks to soaring oil prices.

Woodside posted record profits for the quarter of A$1.48 billion (£727.9 billion) while output rose 14% from a year earlier to 19.3 million barrels of oil equivalent. It says full-year output will increase by as much as 22%.

The company is opening up new oil fields, and began production at the 50%-owned Stybarrow field off north-west Australia in November and the Neptune project in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this month.

Another oil project, named Vincent, also off northwest Australia, is due to start up next month.

The revenue and output figures were ahead of expectations. The company last year gave the green light to the A$12 billion Pluto liquefied natural gas project, one of only three such projects worldwide to be approved in the past three years.