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Looks like the past year hasn’t been so bad after all for BP, which today reported a 16 percent increase in profits over the first quarter of 2010. The company reported $7.2 billion in net earnings—compared to $6.2 billion for the first three months of last year.

The company sold off a bunch of assets in order to pay for the Gulf oil disaster, which is how they managed to keep the profits up. BP also hasn’t been drilling in the deepwater since that whole giant oil catastrophe it unleashed last year. But to still report an increase in income is, well…let’s just say I have a hard time feeling too bad for them because their profits weren’t as high as they could have been.

Never fear though, as the company says it expects to be back out drilling in the Gulf by the second quarter of this year.