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Slick 1Q for oil producers
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April 26, 2001: 1:54 p.m. ET
Texaco, Anadarko, Tesoro see revenue, profits rise as price hike helps results
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Texaco Inc. became the latest major oil company to post a sharp rise in first-quarter profit Thursday as it beat Wall Street expectations for the first quarter.
Additionally, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (APC: up $0.39 to $67.19, Research, Estimates), the nation's biggest independent oil and gas producer, reported sharply higher first-quarter earnings on the strength of higher natural gas prices, while smaller Tesoro Petroleum Co. (TSO: up $1.04 to $15.74, Research, Estimates) said first-quarter earnings nearly tripled.
Texaco (TX: up $1.48 to $73.04, Research, Estimates), the nation's No. 3 oil company behind Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM: up $0.22 to $89.31, Research, Estimates) and Chevron (CHV: up $2.07 to $97.39, Research, Estimates), which is in the process of buying Texaco, earned $835 million, or $1.54 a share, excluding special items. Analysts surveyed by earnings tracker First Call expected the company to earn $1.49 a share, up form $602 million, or $1.10 a share, a year earlier.
Revenue rose 25.4 percent to $14.1 billion.
Texaco CEO Glenn Tilton said "upstream" earnings, that is, earnings related to exploration and production, soared thanks to rising oil and gas prices and several new exploration and drilling initiatives moving ahead in the quarter.
"Downstream" results, or earnings from refining and marketing, came under pressure in the quarter from high utility costs and tight margins.
Texaco reported an average realized natural gas price of $7.14 per thousand cubic feet in the quarter and a crude oil price of $24.31 a barrel, down slightly from a year ago.
Daily oil production was 534,000 barrels per day, 12 percent lower than a year ago. More than half the reduction was due to last year's sales of non-core producing properties, for which the company said it took a $67 million charge.
Anadarko soars
Houston-based Anadarko Petroleum reported first-quarter net income of $656 million, or $2.50 a share, compared with net income of $31 million, or 24 cents a share a year earlier. Analysts on average had anticipated $2.03 a share, according to First Call.
Revenue jumped to $3.05 billion from $661 million.
Anadarko's natural gas production rose to 1.82 billion cubic feet per day from 486 million per day in the first quarter of 2000. The average price it received for its gas rose to $6.79 per thousand cubic feet from $2.46.
Anadarko said its increased production volumes were a result of the July 2000 acquisition of UPR and increased output from its operations in Texas, the Gulf of Mexico, and Alaska.
The company said it would continue to pursue its goal of total production of 200 million barrels of oil equivalent for the full fiscal year.
Tesoro gushes
Meanwhile, San Antonio-based Tesoro Petroleum reported a first-quarter profit of $18.7 million, or 52 cents a share, compared with $6.3 million, or 20 cents a share a year earlier.
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Revenue rose 16 percent to $1.23 billion.
The company also said it expects second-quarter earnings to be more than double the 35 cents a share reported a year ago, citing a tight balance between supply and demand.
Tesoro also announced it would defer the planned maintenance turnaround of one of its refineries until the first quarter of 2002, which caused it to raise its 2001 earnings expectation to a range of $2.40-to-$3.00 a share from the previously announced range of $1.60-to-$2.00 a share.
Apache pumps profits
Additionally, Apache Corp. (APA: up $0.78 to $66.10, Research, Estimates) another independent oil and gas producer, reported first quarter earnings that more than doubled thanks to sharply higher natural gas prices and higher oil and gas production volumes.
Houston-based Apache said net income rose to $277.3 million, or $2.15 a share, from $104.2 million, or 90 cents a share in the year-earlier quarter. Analysts surveyed by First Call expected $2.13 a share earnings.
Revenue increased to $795 million from $448 million.
The company said it had raised its exploration and development budget for 2001 to $1.2 billion from about $1 billion, and that this would include aggressive exploration programs in Egypt, Australia and Canada. 
From staff and wire reports
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