By Mrinalika Roy and Arathy Somasekhar
(Reuters) -Occidental Petroleum on Wednesday raised its full-year production forecast by 1%, but missed second-quarter profit expectations due to a slide in oil and gas prices and took a writedown to exit some operations.
Weak oil and gas prices have hit earnings of U.S. oil producers after a bumper year in 2022 when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine buoyed energy prices.
Occidental’s average realized price for oil fell 32% to $73.59 per barrel for the April-June quarter, while gas prices fell 78% to $1.36 per thousand cubic feet.
Production in the quarter rose 6% to 1.2 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd), above the company’s estimate in May.
The better-than-expected output in the quarter also helped the company raise its full-year production guidance by 1% to between 1.19 million boepd and 1.24 million boepd, from a midpoint of 1.195 million previously.
Occidental also said it will not pursue future exploration in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, and took a $164 million after-tax impairment charge related to the properties.
Occidental had interest in over 300,000 net acres in the Powder River Basin at the end of 2022 and had planned to run one drilling rig in 2023, according to its annual report.
Adjusted profit of 68 cents per share for the second quarter was below analysts’ average estimate of a 72 cents, according to Refinitiv data.
Meanwhile, rival U.S. oil producers Marathon Oil and APA Corp reported quarterly earnings that beat analysts’ estimates on higher than projected output.
Marathon guided full-year production above the prior 190,000 barrels of oil per day midpoint guidance while maintaining a capital spending range of $1.9 billion to $2 billion.
Apache said output was tracking in line with its full-year production guidance of 404,000 to 408,000 boepd.
However, the company cut its full-year exploration and production spending outlook to $1.9 billion from a previous range of $1.9 billion to $2 billion, citing no additional drilling in Suriname in 2023 and deferred drilling activity in the UK North Sea.
(Reporting by Mrinalika Roy in Bengaluru and Arathy Somasekhar in HoustonEditing by Arun Koyyur and Matthew Lewis)
