Murphy Oil Corp., the fuel exploration and production giant based in El Dorado, announced a second-quarter operating loss of $17 million, or 10 cents per diluted share, which the company saw as a strong performance considering a decline in crude oil prices in the period.
The loss compared to a $2.9 million profit in the first quarter, but that result was largely attributed to the sale of Murphy’s interest in Syncrude, an oil-sands producer in Canada, and Montney natural gas processing and pipeline assets, also in Canada. The publicly traded company realized $1.15 billion in net proceeds from those transactions. Murphy had a net loss of $2.27 billion in 2015 as the bottom fell out of the oil market.
The bottom-line results for the second quarter beat most analysts’ estimates, but revenue of $475 million, up 8.5 percent over the second quarter of 2016, fell a bit short of predictions.
The company highlighted crude oil volume of 163 million barrel-of-oil equivalents per day, which it said was on track to achieve its full-year production guidance, and decade-low lease operating expenses of $7.63 per barrel-of-oil equivalent.
It also reported a $201 million investment in capital expenditures, in line with an $890 million annual capital program.
“We continue to successfully execute on our 2017 plan,” company President and CEO Roger W. Jenkins said in a statement. “We have stabilized production levels and maintained high uptime performance across all our operated assets while employing data analytics to drive down unit operating costs to their lowest level in a decade.”
Jenkins also noted that Murphy “drilled a record-setting well in the Kaybob Duvernay,” an oilfield in Canada, and drilled a discovery well offshore in Vietnam.
The company will hold an earnings conference call and webcast at 10 a.m. CDT Thursday.
Sign up for Daily E-news
