Chevron Reports $1.9bn Drop in First Quarter Net Income
Chevron Corporation at the weekend reported earnings of $2.6 billion for first quarter 2015, representing a drop of $1.9 billion from the $4.5 billion recorded in the first quarter of 2014.
According to the company’s financial results, foreign currency effects increased earnings in the 2015 quarter by $580 million, compared with a decrease of $79 million a year earlier.
Also sales and other operating revenues in first quarter 2015 were $32 billion, compared to $51 billion in the year-ago period. “First quarter earnings declined from a year ago due to sharply lower oil prices, which reduced revenue and earnings in our upstream business,” said Chairman and CEO John Watson. “Downstream operations were strong, benefitting from lower feedstock costs and improved refinery reliability,” said Chevron’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, John Watson. “We are responding to the current price environment by capturing cost reductions, pacing new project approvals and further streamlining our portfolio as planned. We’re taking a number of deliberate actions to lower our cost struc- ture, and I expect these efforts to increasingly show through in our financial results as the year progresses,” Watson said.
“Production increased over 3 percent in the period, and we are hitting major milestones on our development projects under construction, like Gorgon and Wheatstone in Australia,” Watson added. “We remain on track to deliver significant cash flow and production growth by 2017.”The company listed its recent upstream milestones to include the introduction of fuel gas and start-up of the first gas turbine generator at the Gorgon LNG plant, installation of Wheatstone platform topsides and announcement of a natural gas discovery, Isosceles-1, in the Carnarvon Basin in 50 percentowned Block WA-392-P, all in Australia and the achievement of first liquids from the Bibiyana Expansion Liquid Recovery Unit in Bangladesh..
Other milestones include the announcement of a joint venture to explore and appraise 24 jointly held offshore leases in the northwest portion of Keathley Canyon in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico and the ramped up oil-equivalent production at Jack/St. Malo in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico to more than 70,000 barrels per day, both in the United States.