British energy producer BG Group said on Thursday that net profits surged by 26 percent in 2011, bolstered by higher global energy prices and strong demand for liquefied natural gas in Asia.
Earnings after taxation rallied to $4.234 billion (3.184 billion euros) last year, compared with $3.351 billion in 2010, BG Group said in a results statement. Revenues jumped by 22 percent to $21.1 billion.
BG Group said that the bumper earnings reflected "the benefit of higher realised prices and an increase in the number of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) cargoes sold to markets outside of the USA, particularly Asia."
However, total production edged one percent lower to 234.1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, hit by a series of outages and third-party infrastructure restrictions in the North Sea.
"In a changing and challenging operational, economic and political environment, I believe these are a good set of results for 2011, which also saw significant progress towards delivering our key growth projects," said chief executive Frank Chapman in the statement.
Investors welcomed the results, sending BG Group shares 3.28 percent higher to 1,493.5 pence in morning deals on the FTSE 100 index, which showed a gain of 0.36 percent.
The company also outlined its growth strategy to ramp up its production of gas and liquefied natural gas.
