Royal Dutch Shell earned the number three spot in the top five rankings of the Integrated Oil & Gas industry in measures of relative performance based on trading activity from yesterday.

The rising costs of crude oil helped the company gain 41% in their profits in the first quarter of this year. In fact, they reported a total net profit of $6.9 billion, which was up from $4.8 billion in the same quarter one year earlier.

Chief Executive of the company Peter Voser has announced a plan with a goal of raising their production to 3.7 million barrels per day in a matter of two years. He also wants to cut costs by $1 billion. Another goal he has includes delivering 20 brand new undertakings in a period of three years.

The other companies earning top five spots included Occidental Pretroleum in first and Suncor Energy in second. Occidental had a gain of 1.27%, Suncor went up by 0.28%, and Royal Dutch Shell experienced a gain of 0.04%.

In other related news, Royal Dutch Shell was hit by the Bodo community in Nigeria with a class-action lawsuit over a massive oil spill where one of their main pipelines burst open in 2008.