Oslo - Statoil ASA, Norway’s biggest oil and gas producer, said adjusted earnings after tax fell 27 percent in the second quarter following a plunge in crude prices.
Net income excluding financial and other items fell to 7.2 billion kroner ($882 million) from 9.9 billion kroner a year earlier, the Stavanger-based company said on Tuesday. Profit beat the average 5.5 billion-kroner estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 20 analysts.
“Statoil delivered encouraging operational performance with good production growth and high regularity, whilst continuing to reduce cost,” Statoil’s Chief Executive Officer Eldar Saetre said in a statement. “Our financial results were characterised by gains from divestments and lower prices.”
Statoil and competitors such as Royal Dutch Shell and Total SA are cutting investments and operational costs after oil prices fell by about 50 percent over the last 12 months. Statoil, which operates more than 70 percent of Norway’s oil and gas production, said earlier this year it will reduce spending by 10 percent in 2015 and cut thousands of jobs in the three years through 2016.
The company, of which the Norwegian state owns a 67 percent stake, will pay 1.8 kroner a share in dividends for the quarter, after saying in February it would maintain payouts at that level in the year’s first three quarters despite lower oil prices. The company has been raising debt and selling assets to afford dividends and investments over the past years.
Output in the quarter rose 4 percent to 1.87 million barrels of oil equivalent a day from a year earlier, the company said.
Bloomberg