Statoil Profit Up on High Crude Prices

OSLO, Norway – Statoil ASA, the Norwegian state-controlled oil company, announced a record third-quarter profit Monday, with high crude prices and increased production pushing net income up 50 percent from a year earlier.

Statoil said its net profit for the August through September quarter was 8.7 billion kroner ($1.35 billion) compared to 5.8 billion kroner a year earlier.

"The third quarter has been another strong quarter for Statoil, characterized by high oil and gas prices, production growth, and good margins and high regularity in the refineries," Chief Executive Helge Lund said. "We can once again present record results from our operations."

The company said a 35 percent increase in crude-oil prices and a 17 percent rise in oil and natural-gas production brought revenues of 105.14 billion kroner ($16.35 billion) compared to 82.05 billion kroner a year ago.

Statoil shares rose 2 percent to 141.50 kroner ($22.04) in early trading on the Oslo stock exchange.

The group said daily production from its Norwegian offshore fields increased 10 percent to 932,000 barrels of oil equivalents from the year-ago quarter. During the same quarter, its international production rose 65 percent to 196,000 barrels of oil equivalents per day.

Barrels of oil equivalent measure the energy content, rather than the volume, of oil and natural gas.

Lund said Statoil won new oil licenses in Libya, Brazil and Nigeria, and has stepped up efforts in the Gulf of Mexico in cooperation with Exxon Mobil Corp. Lund also noted that Statoil is on the short list of partners for Russian gas company Gazprom’s development of the vast Shtokman natural-gas field in the Barents Sea.

However, during the quarter, Statoil also had to announce new cost overruns and delays in its own Barents Sea prestige project, Snoehvit, north of Norway.

The latest cost overrun, of 7 billion kroner ($1.09 billion) announced in September, pushed the cost of the project to 58.3 billion kroner ($9.08 billion), or 50 percent more than the original budget.

Statoil, based in the western Norway port of Stavanger, was founded by the government in 1972 to help manage petroleum resources that now make Norway the world’s third-largest oil exporter, after Saudi Arabia and Russia, and a major natural gas supplier.

The group employs nearly 24,000 people in 29 countries.

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