Oil Prices Lift Chevron's Profits

Chevron(CVX Quote) announced better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings Friday as higher oil prices lifted its profits.

The petroleum giant says it made $2.32 a share in the last three months of 2007, up from $1.74 in the same period a year before. Wall Street analysts had been expecting an average of $2.26.

"Fourth-quarter earnings for our upstream business benefited from a significant increase in the price of crude oil," said CEO Dave O'Reilly in a prepared statement.

But he added that some of the downstream businesses were hurt due to refinery downtime. In addition, the firm wasn't able to pass on all of the increases in oil prices to customers, he said.

The stellar quarter pushed Chevron to a year of record earnings, with a profit per share of $8.77, up from $7.80 in 2006. Revenue for the fourth quarter rose to $61.41 billion from $47.74 billion.

The firm said it pumped the equivalent of 2.61 million barrels of oil a day in the quarter, down from 2.66 million a year ago. The price received per barrel of oil sold averaged $79 during the October through December period, up from about $51 last year.

Money spent on capital renewal and exploration activities jumped to $6.2 billion in the quarter from $5.1 billion previously, with the bulk of the spending going to exploration in both cases.

The firm's total debt shrank to $7.2 billion, down from $9.8 billion.

Shares of Chevron slipped 35 cents to $82.90 in recent market activity.

Chevron's report came the same day the biggest U.S. oil company, Exxon Mobil(XOM Quote), posted record quarterly and annual earnings for an American company.