And Another.....

LONDON (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSa.L) reported a record third-quarter profit on Thursday, beating analysts' forecasts as surging oil prices outweighed losses from hurricanes which stalled production in the Gulf of Mexico.

The world's third-largest listed oil firm by market capitalization said its current cost of supply (CCS) net profit, which strips out gains from rises in the value of fuel inventories, rose 68 percent to $7.369 billion.

Excluding a gain of $1.569 billion from one-off items, mainly related to the sale of an interest in Dutch gas distributor Gasunie, Shell's "clean" CCS earnings were $5.8 billion.

The Shell folks have to be disappointed at these numbers cause the Conoco folks were able to do a double.