Chevron's refinery in Cape Town, South Africa

Exxon, Chevron report quarterly figures

HOUSTON, July 29, 2016 – ExxonMobil and compatriots Chevron announced their results over the second quarter of 2016 on Friday. Exxon saw its net profits take a nosedive, while Chevron reported a reversal of fortunes and posted a loss.

Chevron, which ran a USD 571-million profit over the same period last year, announced a loss of USD 1.47 billion and a drop of more than USD 10 billion in revenue to USD 29.28 billion. The company’s hydrocarbons output also fell year-on-year, coming out at 2.53 million bopd. Chevron pointed to militant activity in Nigeria, which on several occasions targeted the company’s infrastructure, as one of the reasons for the drop.

“The second quarter results reflected lower oil prices and our ongoing adjustment to a lower oil price world,” John Watson, chairman and CEO, said in a statement. “In our upstream business, we recorded impairment and other charges on certain assets where revenue from expected oil and gas production is expected to be insufficient to recover costs,” he said, adding that the operations downstream “continued to perform well.” The company’s divisions recorded quarterly earnings of 1.28 billion.

While ExxonMobil’s figures stayed out of the red, it did report a drop in net profit of almost 60% to USD 1.7 billion, down from USD 4.1 billion in the second quarter last year. Upstream earnings took the biggest beating, falling from USD 1.7 billion to USD 294 million. At 4 million boepd, production was “essentially flat,” according to the company.

Exxon’s downstream segment saw a USD 681-million drop in earnings to reach USD 825 million. Its chemicals business showed resilience, as its results came out only USD 29 million lower to USD 1.2 billion. “The results reflect sharply lower commodity prices, weaker refining margins and continued strength in the chemical segment,” ExxonMobil noted in its press release.

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