Colombia’s largest independent oil producer, posted a 71% increase in its third-quarter net income from the same period a year earlier, fueled by a surge in output and higher crude prices.
Pacific Rubiales, a Toronto-based oil firm that operates the largest oil field in Colombia, reported a third-quarter profit of $193.7 million or 68 cents a share from $113.2 million or 41 cents a share in the same period last year.
For the first nine months of the year, the company’s net income stood at $473.5 million or $1.68 a share, from $203.7 million or 75 cents a share in the same period last year, the company said in a statement released late Tuesday.
Revenue for the first nine months of 2010 totaled $2.37 billion, more than double that of the same period in 2010.
The company, led by former executives of Venezuelan oil giant Petroleos de Venezuela SA, has been successful in turning the once neglected Rubiales field into Colombia’s largest.
The company’s oil output after royalties in the third quarter averaged 87,159 barrels of oil equivalent per day, a 35% increase from a year earlier. The company’s production was hobbled in September by a labor conflict that forced a complete shutdown of the Rubiales and Quifa oil fields.
“The performance of the company during was limited by the labor force protests that occurred in the Rubiales and Quifa fields during September,” said in a research note brokerage firm Interbolsa SA.
