ExxonMobil Q3 Profits Up 50%
US major ExxonMobil announced estimated Q3 profit of $4bn October 27, compared with $2.7bn a year earlier as commodity prices and refinery margins improved. Excluding entitlement effects and divestments, its quarterly oil-equivalent production was 2% higher than the prior year.
CEO Darren Woods said: "A 50% rise in earnings through solid business performance and higher commodity prices is a step forward in our plan to grow profitability. For the fourth-consecutive quarter, we generated cash flow from operations and asset sales that more than covered our dividends and net investments in the business.”
Upstream earnings rose to $1.6bn as commodity prices increased; and its upstream loss in the US almost halved, falling from $447mn to $238mn. Building on its recent success in deepwater exploration, such as the Turbot discovery in Guyana, ExxonMobil added 12 offshore blocks in Brazil, capturing about 2mn acres with high resource potential and competitive fiscal terms, it said.
Natural gas production was 9.6bn ft³/d, down 16mn ft³/d from 2016 as field decline and lower demand were partly offset by project ramp-up, primarily in Australia where the Gorgon project has started this year. European gas output was down: it is with Anglo-Dutch Shell the operator of the Groningen gas field whose output is being lowered each year. In the first nine months it produced 1.84bn ft³/d, down from 2.057bn ft³/d in the same period of 2016.
Downstream results increased to $1.5bn, as margins in the refining sector improved, despite the estimated $160mn impact of Hurricane Harvey; and the absence of favourable asset management gains of $380mn in the prior year from the sale of Canadian retail assets, it said.
The company reported a profit of $7.84bn in the whole of 2016: it almost equalled this in the first half of this year alone, earning $7.36bn in Q1-2. In both 2013 and 2014 however it earned about $32.5bn. So while the worst appears to be over, this year it is still likely to fall some way short of its 2014 results when it earned $16.2bn.
William Powell