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 Shell said its average selling price of crude oil leaped by 66 percent to more than $90 per barrel from the first quarter a year ago.
That sent net profit soaring to a record $9.08 billion, up from $7.28 billion. Sales rose 55 percent to $114 billion.
Analysts said the performance was impressive, especially because expectations were already high.
Shell "delivered a very robust overall performance, with all the divisions outperforming the consensus and our estimates," wrote analyst Alexandre Weinberg of Petercam in a note on the earnings.
"Exploration and production numbers were clearly impressive, in spite of higher industry costs and the weak dollar. ... Flow generation from higher hydrocarbon prices might be underestimated for the entire group of majors (big oil companies)."
Chief Executive Jeroen van der Veer said in a statement the strong numbers were due to a "good operating performance, combined with increased oil and gas prices."
Shares rose 3.3 percent to 25.545 euros ($39.93) in Amsterdam.
Earnings from oil production rose 52 percent to $5.14 billion, due almost entirely to the price increases.
The company said combined production of gas and oil equivalents increased by less than 1 percent to 3.4 million barrels per day, as a 9 percent rise in gas production outweighed a 6 percent fall in oil production.
Refining profits also increased, rising 31 percent to $2.37 billion, but the company warned that margins were under pressure.
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 Stripping out the impact of oil inventories that have risen in value, refining profits would actually have fallen 20 percent, Shell said.
Still, analysts said that was better than expected.
"At first sight, it seems that better marketing and trading were able to offset the weak refining environment," Weinberg said, adding that he believes margins have recovered somewhat in the current quarter, and upgrading his recommendation for shares to "Buy" from "Add."
Shell "trades at an average 15 percent discount to peers and we deem this unjustified," he said.
Shell has invested heavily to improve production after a string of setbacks, including an accounting scandal in 2004 in which it was forced to reduce the size of its proven reserves several times. More recently, it has faced attacks on its pipelines in Nigeria and a forced sale of part of its stake in a major project on Russia's Sakhalin Island to a state-run enterprise.
One of its new projects, producing bitumen -- a heavy form of petroleum
-- from oil-rich sands and shale in Canada, is paying off. The company reported the segment separately from oil and gas production for the first time and it showed earnings of $249 million, more than doubling from the same quarter a year ago.
[Associated Press; By TOBY STERLING]
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