Fall in global oil prices hurts earnings at British energy company BP

British oil company BP says its earnings have fallen in the third quarter as the price of crude oil dropped globally.

The company says its replacement cost profit, a key gauge of earnings for oil companies, fell to $2.39 billion in the three months to September from $3.18 billion in the same period a year earlier.

Its earnings from upstream operations, in which it explores and extracts oil, were down, reflecting the drop in oil prices. The benchmark international contract for crude has fallen $28 in the past four months, to around $86 a barrel.

BP has a stake in Rosneft, the Russian state-controlled oil company. It said Tuesday, however, that sanctions by the U.S. and European Union on Russia "have had no material adverse impact."