Marathon Oil said it plans to make a spending cut of around 29% after losses of $749million in the third quarter. The company said low commodity prices had prompted its move to write down the value of assets. Marathon, with operations in Texas and Equatorial Guinea, said the company expects total output to grow 7%.
SeaBird Exlporation has posted a boost in revenue despite sustained low oil prices and weak market sentiment for exploration. The company said revenue was boosted by 19% compared with the second quarter of the year. Four vessels are currently active in operation on the Mexico Gigante survey and the Aquila Explorer is scheduled to join during the first quarter.
Exxon Mobil Corp. posted higher-than- expected profit as soaring margins on processing oil into fuels blunted the impact of collapsing crude markets. Third-quarter net income fell to $4.24 billion, or $1.01 a share, from $8.07 billion, or $1.89, a year earlier, Irving, Texas-based Exxon said in a statement on Friday.
Oil major Chevron said it had reduced its 2016 budget by 25% as well as laying off around 10% of its workforce. The company said it plans to spend between $25billion to $28billion next year. It will also reduce its spending in 2017 and 2018, an acknowledgement that oil prices are not expected to rise drastically in the next few years.
More than $19 billion in oil and gas writedowns have been reported in a single week as producers acknowledge what investors already knew. Royal Dutch Shell Plc leads the pack in recognizing that drilling prospects are worth a lot less than they used to. The producer announced its worst loss in 16 years on Thursday, including $8.2 billion in impairments. Southwestern Energy Co., Whiting Petroleum Corp. and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. have likewise written off acreage value. For investors, those charges aren’t much of a surprise after oil tumbled 44 percent in the past year, dragging stock prices along with it. Shell has declined 15 percent in the past 12 months, Whiting is down 73 percent and Anadarko fell 26 percent.
Polarcus has seen its revenues rise by 44% in its third quarter compared to its previous results this year. The company said its cash from operations had hit $55million, up from 74% in the second quarter of the year. The seismic player, which had previously been hit with a loss earlier in the year, said it had managed to deliver “significant” cost reductions as well as improve profitability. Polarcus said it was heading into the final part of the year with a 75% booked capacity for the next six months.
Oil major BP’s profits in the third quarter of the year have dropped by 40%. The company, which announced its third quarter results today, said its underlying profits came in at $1.8billion compared with more than $3billion a year ago. The lower results, BP said, were primarily due to the effect of lower oil and gas prices. In its downstream business the operator continued to see a strong performance which saw an increase in profit from $1.5billion last year to $2.3billion.
Stork said the UK market “continues to be tough” amid the challenging oil price decline as it revealed its third quarter results. The company said its order book was down from €1.2billion to just over €1billion for the quarter, impacted by deferrals of contract extensions as well as negative exchange rates. Meanwhile revenue has increased by 5.2% while organic growth has also increased by 4.6%.
OMV said it has revised its oil price assumption for coming years and will take special charges in the third quarter of the year of around €1billion in its upstream business. The move comes after production fell to 292,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day from 307,000 in the previous quarter and 311,000 in the same quarter last year. The Austrian company said the decline in oil price had “significantly burdened” its performance in the quarter.