Voser said he was sure energy prices would rise “over the next decades” and that oil was now being bolstered by several factors: “It is reflecting obviously today expectations that demand will still go up and supply will be in a catch up mode.

“It also reflects that OPEC spare capacity is now below 2 million barrels (per day), according to the latest numbers, and there are some geopolitical tensions in it,” he said.

Voser said he did not support the release of oil from strategic stocks, announced by the International Energy Agency at the end of June, because it would not bring long-term relief to global oil markets.

“I don’t believe in these measures,” Voser said. “These are very short-term measures and do not bring any medium and long-term benefits.”

He said the oil market instead needed long-term measures such as new sources of oil and called for access to reserves in areas including the US and the Arctic as well as faster development of oil resources in Iraq.

Such moves would be “much more important than releasing some short-term inventories, because that will really drive a sustained supply to meet demand in the longer term.”

Shell earlier reported a near doubling in second quarter profits as higher oil prices and one-time gains offset a drop in production.

Net profit of $8.66 billion was up from $4.39 billion a year earlier. The figure was helped by a $1.44 billion gain booked on a mix of tax credits, trading activities, and the sale of businesses.

The company’s CCS profit, or profit at its current cost of supplies, was $6.55 billion excluding one-time gains, up from $4.21 billion a year earlier. The nonstandard measure, which seeks to strip out the impact of volatile oil prices on the company’s earnings, is closely watched by analysts and came in slightly lower than they had forecast.

Though Shell has been investing heavily in new projects, production fell 2 percent to 3.05 million barrels per day. Excluding asset sales, production would have risen 2 percent, Shell said, with 285 thousand barrels of oil per day added from new fields in Qatar, Nigeria and Canada more than offsetting the impact of field declines.

“We have made important progress with new production in 2011, and the ramp-up of our new projects should drive our financial performance in the coming quarters,” said Voser in a statement.

Profits at upstream operations were up 85 percent to $6.06 billion, including $641 million in one-off gains from tax credits, trading gains, and sales of operations, Shell said.

The downstream operations, which include the refining arm, saw profits drop 7 percent on a CCS basis to $1.08 billion, reflecting lower refinery intakes and worse margins.

The non-CCS results included gains of $802 million, mostly from the sale of operations in Chile and the Dominican Republic.