SAUDI state oil company Aramco yesterday reported an 82 per cent rise in profits for the first quarter of this year, as the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushes oil and gas prices to record highs.

Net income of $39.5 billion (£32bn), up from $21.7bn for the same period of last year, reflects the price of oil hitting a 14-year high in March as Western countries slapped sanctions on Russian exports. The bonanza will help fuel Saudi Arabia’s own war on Yemen, which was estimated to have cost Riyadh over $100bn by 2020 and has killed over 300,000 people.

After Aramco surpassed Apple as the world’s most valuable company last week, its president and chief executive Amin H Nasser claimed it was “focused on helping meet the world’s demand for energy that is reliable, affordable and increasingly sustainable” — claims likely to infuriate climate change campaigners as Aramco, which has made the single biggest contribution to global carbon emissions of any company from 1965 to today, works to increase oil and gas production.