By Tara Patel
Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Total SA, Europe’s largest oil refiner, said fourth-quarter profit from producing gasoline, diesel and other fuels rose as crude prices dropped.
Refining margins rose to $41.40 a ton from $30.10 a ton a year earlier, the Paris-based company said today in a statement on its Web site. The average price for liquid products fell to $49.40 a barrel from $84.50 a barrel a year earlier, while natural gas rose to $7.57 a million British thermal units from $6.08.
“The overall impact on our preliminary fourth-quarter estimates will be a gain of around 10 million euros,” Bertrand Hodee, an analyst at Kepler Capital Markets in Paris, wrote in a research note. He was expecting a 36 percent drop in fourth- quarter profit from the previous three months because of the drop in oil prices.
Refining margins in the fourth quarter were 8 percent lower than the $45 a ton reported in the third quarter, according to the statement.
Crude oil for next-month delivery averaged $59.08 a barrel in New York in the last three months of 2008, down from $118.22 in the third quarter, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Futures averaged $90.50 in the fourth quarter of 2007.
Oil for February delivery traded at $37.50 on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 12:23 a.m. London time today, down 75 percent from the July 11 record of $147.27.
The French oil company, scheduled to release fourth-quarter earnings on Feb. 12, has said fourth-quarter maintenance would lead to partial shutdowns of the Feyzin and Provence refineries.
To contact the reporter on this story: Tara Patel in Paris at tpatel2@bloomberg.net
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