02 February 2013, Sweetcrude, Houston – US super major, Chevron Corporation reported, Friday, earnings of $7.2 billion for the fourth quarter 2012, compared with $5.1 billion in the 2011 fourth quarter.
Results in the 2012 period included a gain of $1.4 billion from an upstream asset exchange.
Full-year 2012 earnings were $26.2 billion, down 3 percent from $26.9 billion in 2011, the company said in statement.
Sales and other operating revenues in the fourth quarter 2012 were $56 billion, down from $58 billion in the year-ago period, mainly due to lower crude oil volumes.
“Chevron delivered another very strong year in 2012,” said Chairman and CEO John Watson. “Our upstream portfolio continues to produce excellent results. We’ve now led the industry in earnings per barrel for over three years. Our downstream businesses also delivered highly competitive earnings per barrel.”
Watson added:”Strong cash flows allowed us to invest aggressively in our major capital projects and to acquire several important, new resource opportunities”.
He continued: “We made significant progress on our Gorgon and Wheatstone LNG projects in Australia in the past year. At the same time, we announced six additional natural gas discoveries offshore Australia, and completed an asset exchange that increased our interests in Carnarvon Basin fields.
“These results support future expansion opportunities for these two projects.”
“We also expanded our global exploration resource acreage in 2012,” Watson noted, “including entries into five new countries, the addition of significant new acreage in the United States, and the recently announced acquisition of a 50 percent operated interest in a western Canada LNG project.”
Watson said the company added approximately 1.07 billion barrels of net oil-equivalent proved reserves in 2012.
These additions, which are subject to final reviews, equate to 112 percent of net oil-equivalent production for the year.
The largest additions were for the Gorgon Project, as a result of development drilling and additional reservoir data.
Also significant were additions for fields in the United States, Asia and offshore eastern Canada.
The company said it would provide additional details relating to its 2012 reserve additions in its annual report scheduled for filing with the SEC on February 22.
“In the downstream business, we completed a multiyear plan to streamline the asset portfolio. We continued to focus our investments toward higher growth and higher margin products,” Watson added.
In 2012, the company’s 50 percent-owned affiliate, Chevron Phillips Chemical Company, announced the beginning of commercial production at a petrochemical facility in Saudi Arabia, and the initiation of front-end engineering and design for several petrochemical projects on the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Significant progress was also made on the construction of new capacity to make premium base oil at the company’s Pascagoula, Mississippi, refinery and additional capacity at the company’s existing additives plant in Singapore.
Worldwide net oil-equivalent production was 2.67 million barrels per day in the fourth quarter 2012, up from 2.64 million barrels per day in the 2011 fourth quarter.
Production increases from project ramp-ups in Nigeria, the United States and Thailand, higher cost recovery volumes in Bangladesh and new volumes from the recently-acquired Delaware Basin properties were partially offset, according to the company.
