TNK-BP Sale Boosts BP Profit

British Petroleum PLC (BP.LN, $471.00, +$14.25) has reported a tripling of its first-quarter profit relative to last year, thanks to the proceeds from its $27.5b sale of its portion of Russian joint venture TNK-BP. According to the Wall Street Journal, the TNK-BP deal has helped to offset BP's losses from falling oil and gas production, with $12.5b of the British oil giant's $16.86b in first-quarter profit coming from the sale of TNK-BP to Russian oil company OAO Rosneft. As the WSJ reports, "Excluding the TNK sale and other one-off items, BP's profit was $4.22 billion for the quarter ended March 31. That is down 9.4% from a year earlier, but well above the average of $3.25 billion projected by nine analysts polled by Dow Jones Newswires. Even though overall oil and gas production declined, thanks to asset sales, the company benefited from new higher-margin oil projects."