Royal Dutch Shell's oil trading earnings double in 2020 to $2.6 billion

Royal Dutch Shell's 2020 earnings from trading crude oil and refined products doubled from the previous year to $2.6 billion, helping to offset a sharp drop in fuel demand due to the coronavirus pandemic.
 

Shell's oil trading operations, known internally as Trading & Supply, accounted for 43% of the Oil Products division's total earnings of $5.995 billion in 2020. Trading earnings totalled $1.3 billion in 2019, Shell's annual report, which was released on Thursday, said.
 

The unusually high contribution from trading helped Shell to weather one of the toughest years in the industry's history, when energy consumption collapsed during the