Canadian Oil Sands Back On Track With More Record Profits

The last of Canada’s big oil sands producers has reported record 2022 profits, bringing the total profit for last year of the big five to over $25.7 billion as they rode the tailwinds of a Chinese COVID crisis and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

For Q4 2022 earnings, the last to report was Canadian Natural Resources Ltd on Thursday. And while quarterly profits were a miss, full-year earnings were around $8 billion.

Canadian Natural Resources’ Q4 2022 results showed earnings of $1.58 billion ($1.36 per diluted share), down from $2.53 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021. Those figures missed analyst expectations of $2.27 per share, based on Refinitiv data, as reported by the Globe & Mail, with the company saying that equipment repairs and weather forced reductions in production that could carry into Q1 2023 earnings, with output expected to be reduced by 25,000 bpd.

On Wednesday, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) announced it was expecting over $29 billion in upstream oil and gas production investment this year, giving another boost to the oil sands industry, Reuters reports.

Of that expected investment, oil sands is poised to receive around 40%.

While Canadian oil sands companies have been reaping the benefits of a chaotic global oil market for the past year, they remain under tough scrutiny in a world attempting to balance energy transition with sufficient supply.

Barclays has now announced a new policy to limit financing for oil sands. Beginning in July this year, Barclayes will no longer provide financing to companies that generate more than 10% of their revenues from oil sands assets, including for pipelines carrying oil sands. 

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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