StatoilHydro first quarter net profit soars

The company said its net profit for the January through March period was 16 billion kroner (US$3.15 billion; euro2.04 billion), compared with 9.9 billion kroner a year earlier, due largely to a 42 percent increase in crude oil prices during the year.

"We deliver a good first-quarter result characterized by solid production in a market with high oil and gas prices", said Helge Lund, StatoilHydro's chief executive.

The report was released before trading opened for the day on the Oslo stock exchange.

The company, based in the western Norwegian city of Stavanger, said revenues for the quarter increased 33 percent from a year earlier to 159.2 billion kroner (US$31.3 billion; euro20.4 billion)

A news release said the increase was also due to lower write-downs of inventories, gains from sales of assets and a slightly lower tax rate. The increase in net operating income was partly offset by higher realized costs and higher exploration expenses, StatoilHydro said.

StatoilHydro said its daily oil and gas production in the first quarter increased to 1.89 million barrels of oil equivalent from 1.81 million barrels a year earlier. Barrels of oil equivalent measure energy content rather than volume of oil and natural gas.

"Several new fields have been added to the StatoilHydro upstream production portfolio since the turn of the year, for example Volve and Gulltopp on the Norwegian Continental Shelf and the deep-water Gunashli field in Azerbaijan," said Lund.

Lund said the company also had a successful oil and gas exploration program, with 12 new discoveries in Norway and three internationally so far this year.

StatoilHydro, with a staff of about 31,000 people in 40 countries, is the key producer on the offshore fields that make Norway a major oil and natural gas exporter. It was created in October when state-controlled oil company Statoil ASA took over the oil division of Norwegian rival Norsk Hydro ASA.