Exxon Mobil’s Net Income Surges 63%

Exxon Mobil Corp. said Thursday that its fourth-quarter profit rose 63% on soaring oil and gas prices, a huge tax gain and a rebound in chemical earnings.

Global tensions, rising demand and worries about low inventories helped boost crude oil prices by 11% and natural gas prices by 16% in the quarter.

Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, reported net income of $6.65 billion, or $1.01 a share, including a previously announced gain of $2.23 billion from the settlement of a long-running tax dispute with the Internal Revenue Service.

A year earlier, the Irving, Texas-based company posted net income of $4.09 billion, or 60 cents a share, including merger costs and results from sold-off Chilean copper mines.

Excluding one-time items, earnings in the latest period rose to $4.42 billion, or 68 cents a share, from $3.79 billion, or 56 cents. That topped analysts’ average forecast by 10 cents a share, according to Reuters Research.

“Bottom line, it was a great quarter,” said Shawn Campbell, a fund manager at Campbell Asset Management. “But I and the rest of the market expected a great quarter, given where commodity prices are. The real question is, is this as good as it gets?”

Quarterly revenue rose 17% to $66 billion.

Exxon Mobil’s earnings news sent its shares up 66 cents to $41.47 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Fourth-quarter earnings from exploration and production operations rose 8.9% to $3.27 billion, even as the company’s worldwide oil and gas production fell 0.6% to 4.41 million barrels a day.

The biggest earnings surprise came from Exxon Mobil’s massive chemicals business, which posted its best results in five years. Segment profit surged to $476 million from $76 million a year earlier thanks to wider margins, lower costs and the weaker dollar.

Gains in other segments were offset by weaker refining and marketing earnings, which fell 10% to $736 million, in part because of thinner margins.