Chevron Corporation today reported its biggest quarterly profit in three years, outperforming other major oil companies, as rising crude prices and proceeds from the sale of a refinery made up for a slump in production.
Third-quarter net income more than doubled to $7.83 billion, or $3.92 a share, from $3.77 billion, or $1.87, a year earlier, the San Ramon, California-based company said in a statement today. Excluding a gain from the sale of a Welsh refinery, the per-share result was 22 cents more than the average of 19 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Chevron quit the European oil-refining market in August when it sold theU.K. refinery and related assets to Valero Energy Corp., a transaction that accounted for $500 million of third-quarter results. Production fell to the equivalent of 2.6 million barrels of oil a day, from 2.74 million for the same period last year. Sales rose 30 percent to $64.4 billion.
“They are benefiting from higher crude prices and strategic asset sales,” Gianna Bern, president of Brookshire Advisory & Research Inc., a Chicago-based risk-management consultant to the energy industry. “I’d expect production to bounce back in the near future.”
Oil and natural-gas production was less than the 2.63 million barrels a day forecast by Paul Cheng, a New York-based analyst at Barclays Plc. Two hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, maintenance work at oil installations and less production from some overseas joint ventures hurt output, the company said.
Chevron posted the largest year-on-year third-quarter profit increase among major international oil producers that have announced results.
