Equinor's second-quarter profits declined by 4% year-on-year as natural gas prices fell, according to accounts released this morning.
The Norwegian oil and gas producer's adjusted earnings before tax for April-June eased to £5.8 billion from £6billion a year earlier, although that beat the £5.4billion predicted by analysts.
Equinor delivered production of two million barrels per day in the second quarter, up marginally on the same quarter last year.
That was helped by the Buzzard field in the North Sea, where new wells contributed with new production, but was more than offset by lower production from the US due to turnarounds offshore and planned curtailments onshore to capture higher value when demand is higher.
In the UK, construction is also progressing on Dogger Bank A offshore wind farm with 27 turbines either fully or partly installed.
The project targets full commercial operations during the first half of 2025. Based on this, Equinor said the expected growth in power production from renewables assets in 2024 is now expected to be around 70% from the 2023-level.
Anders Opedal, President and CEO of Equinor, said: “Our operational performance continued to be strong through the quarter and we delivered 3% production growth. This secured solid financial results. We maintain a competitive capital distribution, expecting to deliver a total of 14 billion dollars to our shareholders in 2024.
“Field developments and high production contributes to energy security for Europe. To unlock further long-term value creation, we continue to optimise our portfolio. We also progressed our renewables projects and accessed three new licences for CO2 storage, to build a profitable business for a future low carbon energy system.”
Tomorrow, the firm will commence the third tranche of up to £1.2billion of its share buy-back programme for 2024 in an effort to reduce the issued share capital of the company.
All shares purchased will thus be cancelled through a capital reduction at the annual general meeting of the company in May 2025.
FTSE 100
The UK's flagship share index, the FTSE 100, was down 31-points at 8,167 shortly after opening this morning.
Brent crude oil futures were up 0.53%, trading at $81.44 a barrel.
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