DOW JONES NEWSWIRES Chevron Corp. (CVX) expects to report a significant decline in fourth-quarter earnings amid receding energy prices and bigger-than-expected charges, and said its worldwide refining operations would continue to suffer from weak margins.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected per-share earnings of $1.78 on revenue of $61.72 billion.
Chevron expects charges in the fourth quarter to be well above the high end of the general guidance for $250 million to $300 million of items related to corporate and other activities.
The second-largest U.S. oil company by market value said in its interim update issued after the closing bell Thursday that earnings from its upstream business, which includes its exploration and production operations, were hurt by lower oil and gas prices. In the third quarter, earnings at Chevron's oil-and-gas production segment surged 80% to $6.18 billion.
Chevron said earnings from its downstream refining and marketing operations are expected to include gains from provisionally priced crude and derivatives, resulting from sharply falling commodity prices, as in the third quarter when the company reported earnings more than quadrupled.
Full fourth-quarter worldwide refining margins, or the profit from processing crude oil into petroleum products and selling it, are likely to drop sequentially, but the company said marketing-indicator margins improved somewhat in the fourth quarter.
During the first two months of the fourth quarter, Chevron, a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average since February, fetched on average $61.70 a barrel for crude oil from its U.S. fields, down from $112.22 for the full third quarter and $81.57 a year earlier. Internationally, Chevron's realized crude prices fell about $50 a barrel from the third quarter to $53.29 a barrel.
U.S. natural-gas prices averaged $4.98 per thousand cubic feet, down from $8.64 in the third quarter and $6.08 a year ago. Overseas, the average natural-gas price fell to $5.30 from $5.37 in the third quarter but up from $4.32 a year ago.
At the same time, Chevron said oil production was 39,000 barrels a day lower than in the third quarter due to the impact of the September hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. Internationally, production increased about 10% amid completion of an expansion project and increased production off the coast of Nigeria.
U.S. natural-gas production fell 21% from a year ago, while overseas gas output increased 5.2%.
Chevron's shares were down 0.6% at $73.82 in after-hours trading. They closed up 0.4% on Thursday.
The company will report fourth-quarter results Jan. 30.
-By John Kell, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-5285; john.kell@dowjones.com
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Publié le 08 janvier 2009 Copyright © 2009 Dowjones