Profits at Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, dipped 23 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, the company said today.
The company reported net income of $6.05 billion, or $1.27 a share, for the previous quarter. The company posted net income of $7.82 billion, or $1.54 a share during the same period last year.
For the full year, Exxon’s profit dropped 56 percent to $19.4 billion, compared with $44 billion in 2008.
Still, while much of the industry was retracting, Exxon expanded. The company increased its capital spending plan for the year by 4 percent to $27.1 billion. Its production of oil and gas went up 2 percent from the same quarter a year ago.
But the company’s global refining business, hurt by weaker oil prices and lower refining margins, lost $189 million in the fourth quarter.
The company continues to make investments for new contracts. It announced its $31 billion purchase of XTO Energy Inc., a top U.S. shale producer, in December. Exxon also was the first U.S. company to gain a toehold in Iraq’s oil fields after it won a bid for the West Qurna Phase 1 field with Royal Dutch Shell PLC. The companies plan to boost the field’s output to 2.325 million barrels a day, up from 279,000 barrels a day (Jad Mouawad, New York Times, Feb. 1). – DFM
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