By Ron Bousso and Shadia Nasralla

LONDON (Reuters) – Shell (LON:) reported on Thursday a report first-quarter revenue of $9.13 billion, boosted by greater oil and fuel costs and a powerful efficiency of its buying and selling division.

Shell joins sector rivals, together with BP (NYSE:) and TotalEnergies, which additionally noticed a pointy rise in earnings pushed by power costs and robust buying and selling. Norway’s Equinor, a serious vendor of fuel in Europe, reported report earnings on Wednesday.

Shell mentioned that its dividend funds and share repurchases reached $5.4 billion within the quarter, a part of its plan to purchase again $8.5 billion shares within the first half of the yr.

Its dividend rose to 25 cents per share as deliberate.

It mentioned that within the present setting it expects shareholder distributions to exceed 30% of cashflow within the second half of the yr.

Shell mentioned it wrote down $3.9 billion post-tax because of its resolution to exit its operations in Russia following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. It’s also winding down oil and fuel buying and selling with Russia.

First-quarter adjusted earnings rose 43% from the earlier quarter to $9.13 billion, above a mean analyst forecast supplied by the corporate for a $8.67 billion revenue.

That compares with earnings of $3.23 billion a yr earlier.