Top U.S. oil and gas companies are reporting a drop in fourth-quarter earnings, while also upping payouts to investors and staying bullish about carbon capture and hydrogen.
In earnings calls Friday, Chevron and Exxon Mobil each highlighted an increase in their quarterly dividends — by 5 percent and 4 percent, respectively — while posting results that reflected declining refining margins. London-based Shell also reported a decline in earnings. For each, earnings in the fourth quarter dropped compared to the third.
“I’m not going to call it a perfect storm, but it was a quarter where there were a lot of things that all went in one direction and it was a negative direction,” Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said during a question-and-answer portion of the call.
Even still, Chevron cheered other developments, including starting production at a project in Kazakhstan’s Tengiz oil field and the start of the second Trump administration. President Donald Trump released a flurry of executive orders on his first day in office that aimed to boost fossil fuel development and claw back support and funding for clean energy.