Italy's energy major Eni (NYSE: E) booked an adjusted net profit for the third quarter that beat consensus estimates as strong upstream performance partly offset lower commodity prices compared to the same period last year.
Eni reported on Friday adjusted net profit of $1.9 billion (1.82 billion euros), which was "impacted by weaker hydrocarbon prices, but significantly offset by underlying business outperformance."
The figure compares with a company-provided analyst consensus of $1.72 billion (1.63 billion euros).
Year-over-year, Eni's profit fell in the third quarter as last year's third quarter saw soaring oil and natural gas prices following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Adjusted earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) at the exploration and production (E&P) division were down by 39% from the third quarter of 2022, due to weaker realized oil and gas prices, but it was nearly 30% higher than the second quarter of 2023, Eni said.
Eni's oil and gas production in the quarter was up 4% year-over-year at 1.64 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d).
"On E&P we are accelerating our plan to boost equity gas and LNG production, a key driver to secure reliable supply and at the same time pursue our decarbonization goals," Eni's chief executive officer Claudio Descalzi said, commenting on the third-quarter results.
"The outstanding Geng North-1 exploration discovery, currently the industry's largest this year, together with the soon to be completed Neptune acquisition and recent purchase of Chevron's interests in Indonesia, will enable us to target exploitation of material resources offshore the Kutei basin," Descalzi said, referring to the Kutei basin offshore Indonesia, where Eni plans to fast-track the development of the Geng North deepwater gas field.
During the third quarter, Eni also started oil and gas production from an offshore field in Cote d'Ivoire in West Africa less than two years after the discovery.
"The start-up, in less than two years from discovery, of the giant Baleine oilfield off the Cote d'Ivoire reaffirms the validity of our value accretive fast-track development approach, ensuring traditional energy supplies whilst, as Africa's first net-zero scope 1 and 2 project, decarbonizing our operations," Descalzi said on Friday.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More