Chevron today reported its first quarter earnings of $4.5billion down from last year’s $6.2bn.
But despite the downturn chairman and chief executive John Watson said the firm planned to boost production by 20%.
He said: “Our first quarter earnings were down from a year ago primarily due to lower prices and volumes for crude oil. Crude prices were tempered by global economic factors, while our current year production volumes were affected by weather-related, unplanned downtime, particularly in Kazakhstan.”
“We continue to advance our key development projects and we are anticipating production growth in 2015 and beyond as a result of these investments.
“Significant progress has been made on the construction of our Gorgon and Wheatstone projects in Australia. Our Jack, St. Malo and Big Foot projects in the Gulf of Mexico are also progressing, with first production planned for late 2014 and mid-2015, respectively. Our financial strength continues to allow us to fund these important growth projects which are expected to support a 20% increase in production by 2017, and to grow shareholder distributions.”
Chevron’s upstream strand produced 2.59 million barrels per day (bpd) in the first quarter, down from last year’s 2.65 million bpd. Projects in Nigeria, Angola and the United States resulted in increased production. However, weather-related and unplanned downtime, particularly in Kazakhstan had a significant bearing on overall production.
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