Profits will still evident for the oil and lubes majors, but Q4 figures reflect a challenging 2011.
ExxonMobil, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Valvoline all reported challenging Q4 figures for 2011 as they look towards longer-term recovery in oil demand and the global economy.
ExxonMobil just beat market expectations with earnings up 2% on the same period in the previous year at $£9.4bn, although earnings for the whole of 2011 rose by 35% at just over $41bn. Although upstream earnings were mainly lifted by natural gas business, volumes were down, as were downstream earnings for the quarter at $425m, from $725m in 2010.
As the world's largest publically quoted company, ExxonMobil is one of the key economic bellweathers and the Q4 figures reflected the global economic challenges faced towards the end of the year. The company's overall production saw a nine percent drop during the period.
Enhanced oil recovery Image: Shell |
Royal Dutch Shell's figures also reflected the end of year pressures, with current cost of supplies earnings of $6.5bn for the quarter - against $5.7bn last year - and annual figures of $28.6bn compared to $18.6bn in 2010. Although significantly improved year-on-year, upstream earnings fell slightly from Q3 at $5.1bn, from $5.4bn. Downstream operations showed a $278m loss against a $1.8bn profit in the previous Quarter.
Shell CEO, Peter Voser blamed a "sharp downturn in industry refining margins and North American natural gas prices" as the main causes of pressure on the figures.
ConocoPhillips bucked the downward trend with a $3.4bn Q4's worth of earnings, an increase of 66%, helped significantly by a $1.5bn asset sales windfall and despite the clean-up and compensation costs of the Bohai spill in China. Exploration and Production earnings rose, helped by LNG and crude prices. The company's full year earnings were also up at $12.4bn for 2011, against $11.4bn in the previous year.
Meanwhile Chevron reported a 3.2% downturn in Q4 earnings with it's downstream operations turning in a $61m loss against a $742m profit in 2010. The results were below market expectations, with a reported profit of $5.12bn from $5.3bn the previous year. However, full year earnings improved by 41% at $26.9bn from $19bn in 2010, helped by significantly boosted oil and gas reserves - up 171%.
Lubes producer, Valvoline, also announced mixed results with a near 30% drop in Q4 operating profits at $47m from $67m in the previous hears. However, sales earnings were better at $475, almost seven percent improved on 2010, despite a nine percent year-on-year drop in volume at 36.7m gallons for Q4. The news came as part of parent company Ashland's Q1 2012 figures, which showed a 30% improvement on the final Quarter of 2011.