Repsol-YPF Chairman Antonio Brufau says the company is producing about 160,000 barrels of crude daily from fields it runs with partners. That’s down from 300,000 barrels per day production for Repsol in Libya before the crisis started.
The company also still has employees who are stranded in Libya, and Brufau said Repsol is trying to get them out. Repsol flew 88 people, employees and their dependents, to Spain from Libya on Wednesday.
Repsol-YPF said earlier high oil prices and the sale of a stake in its Brazilian operations helped its fourth quarter profit more than double from a year earlier.
Net income for the October-December period was €499 million ($685 million), up from €241 million for the same period in 2009.
The company did not say what impact it expected from the chaos in Libya, which has prompted it to suspend production there this week.
Repsol’s Libyan production last year was 34,777 barrels of oil equivalent per day, accounting for 3.8 percent of its total production.
Revenue for the fourth quarter rose 41 percent to €1 billion from €750 million a year earlier. Besides higher oil prices, Repsol was also helped by the sale of a 40 percent stake in its Brazilian division to China’s Sinopec Group for $7.1 billion.
For all of 2010, net profit jumped 57 percent to €2 billion.
The company said its refining margin indicator in Spain widened to $2.9 a barrel in the fourth quarter compared with a flat rate a year earlier. For the full year it rose to $2.5 a barrel from $1.3 in 2009.
Hydrocarbon production was up 3.2 percent for the quarter.
Repsol’s shares slipped less than 1 percent at €23.48 in Thursday morning trading on Madrid’s main exchange after the results were released.