Royal Dutch Shell disappointed with its second quarter earnings , reporting numbers much lower than what analysts had expected. Shell’s profits fell by 72 percent, dropping to $1.05 billion, down from $3.76 billion in the second quarter of 2015. The numbers are the worst quarterly earnings in 11 years. They also missed expectations by a large margin – analysts had predicted earnings of $2.16 billion. “This is a very big surprise from Shell,” Brendan Warn, a managing director at BMO Capital Markets, told Bloomberg in an interview. “Things are not looking up in the third quarter either, with weakness in the industry’s refining environment and Shell’s oil production still under pressure.” The second quarter also reflected the first full quarter of the BG Group takeover, which did not rescue the company from poor market conditions. BG helped increase Shell’s oil and gas production by 28 percent to […]