Page 10 - NorthAmOil Week 44 2021

NorthAmOil PERFORMANCE NorthAmOil

Super-majors report highest

quarterly profits in years

GLOBAL US-BASED super-majors Chevron and Exx- price cycles, providing this resilience through
onMobil have posted their highest quarterly the low periods and leveraging upside when
profits in years. This comes as producers of all markets are strong,” he added.
sizes across North America report higher profits “Our first priority was to significantly grow
and output, buoyed by the strongest commodity the value of our base business to achieve indus-
prices in some time. try-leading earnings and cash flow growth,”
Chevron reported net income of $6.1bn, said ExxonMobil’s chairman and CEO, Darren
marking its highest quarterly profit since the Woods, on the super-major’s earnings call. “This
first quarter of 2013. This was an increase from is work that has been ongoing for some time and
a loss of $207mn in the same quarter of 2020, is built on the significant changes we have made
and came in well above Wall Street expectations to our organisation and increased focus on fully Despite
of $4.1bn, according to data from S&P Global leveraging all of our competitive advantages in
Market Intelligence. technology, scale, integration, functional excel- proceeding with
ExxonMobil, meanwhile, posted a profit of lence and most importantly, our people,” he
$6.8bn – its highest level since late 2017 and up continued. “This also allowed us to improve some caution, the
from a loss of $680mn a year ago. operating performance, drive down costs, and
Production was also up for Chevron, which develop a portfolio of industry-advantaged two giants both
said its global output of 3.03mn barrels of oil high-return investments.” disclosed plans
equivalent per day (boepd) marked an increase Despite proceeding with some caution, the
of 7% year on year. This was attributed largely to two giants both disclosed plans to step up drill- to step up drilling
its acquisition of Noble Energy last year. Exxon- ing in the prolific Permian Basin, at least some-
Mobil, meanwhile, reported roughly flat produc- what. Breber said his company would add two in the prolific
tion y/y at 3.67mn boepd. rigs in the Permian in the fourth quarter, while
Comments from company executives indi- Woods mentioned a “couple” more rigs in the Permian Basin, at
cate that both super-majors continue to focus on basin as his company moves forward with its least somewhat.
delivering a more disciplined performance even plans.
as the market improves. Overall, though, both companies said they
“Compared to before COVID, operating remained focused on paying down debt and
costs are down, upstream production is up, and returning cash to shareholders, rather than
we’re much more capital efficient,” said Chevron’s boosting spending to ramp up output.
chief financial officer, Pierre Breber, on the com- Breber cautioned that current high natural
pany’s earnings call. “Cost efficiency and capital gas prices in particular felt “more cyclical than
efficiency are essential to navigate commodity structural”.™

P10 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 44 04•November•2021