The French oil major Total said Friday that its 2012 first quarter net profit had fallen by 7% to €366 billion.
The group's first-quarter profit when adjusted for earnings on holdings in other companies and stock effects, slipped by a more modest 1% to €3.07 billion, a Total statement said.
Sales were €51.17 billion in the first quarter, the company said, before adding that refining margins had rebounded at the start of the second quarter.
The result was penalised by higher taxes than during the same period a year earlier, and by a difficult environment in the the petrochemical and refining sectors.
The oil group said that its output in the three months from January through March had amounted to 2.37 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, stable from the same period a year earlier.
