Gazprom profits rise 56 pct

ISTANBUL - Daily News with wires

Russian gas giant Gazprom announced yesterday that its net profit for the first half of 2011 had jumped 56 percent to over $25 billion, helped by higher energy prices and volumes of gas sold.
The bumper results carried on Gazprom’s strong performance from 2010 and the start of this year when it posted some of the biggest profits in corporate history.
First half profits were 771.7 billion rubles ($25.7 billion), powered by an increase in net sales of gas of 39 percent in the period to 1.47 trillion rubles ($48.9 billion).