Paris, Wednesday, August 9, 2000 Profit Surges At BP Amoco On Oil Prices Compiled by Our Staff From Dispatches LONDON - BP Amoco PLC said Tuesday that its profit in the second quarter more than doubled because of rising oil prices, its takeover of Atlantic Richfield Co. and cost-cutting. Profit from operations rose to $3.61 billion from $1.37 billion a year earlier, which excluded results from the $33.1 billion takeover of Arco in April. Like rival Exxon Mobil Corp., BP Amoco is benefiting from oil prices that averaged 70 percent more than in the year-earlier period. Yet BP in the past two years has spent more than $100 billion on buyouts of other companies - in addition to Arco, BP has bought the oil companies Amoco Corp. and Burmah Castrol PLC - creating confusion over the company's profit growth. ''The problem is determining what the clean number is,'' said Bruce Evers, an analyst at Investec Henderson Crosthwaite. The profit is calculated on a replacement-cost basis, taking into account the cost of replacing BP's reserves at current oil prices and stripping out one-time items. In London, BP Amoco shares fell to 600 pence ($9), down 7 pence BP Amoco was the last of the three biggest oil companies to report second-quarter results. Two weeks ago, Exxon Mobil posted a 123 percent jump in second-quarter earnings; Royal Dutch/Shell Group reported a 95 percent increase in profit last week. ''These results represent the cumulative impact of the progress we've made over the last few years - growth in volume and, equally important, growth in total productivity resulting from the way we work,'' said John Browne, BP's chief executive... http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/WED/FIN/earns.2.html
