Canadian oil and gas firm Cenovus Energy posted a rise in third-quarter profit on Thursday, helped by a jump in refinery throughput as operations at two major U.S. plants improved following extensive rebuilds.
Calgary-based Cenovus said refinery throughput was 664,000 barrels per day (bpd), up 25 per cent from the same period a year earlier, as its Toledo, Ohio, refinery performed well following a second-quarter restart and a unit at its Superior, Wisconsin, refinery returned to full operations.
Cenovus’s U.S. refineries have been a drag on earnings in recent years, following a deadly fire at Toledo in 2022 and an explosion at Superior in 2018.
Keith Chiasson, Cenovus’s chief operating officer, said the company was “pretty excited” with the restarts given what the downstream business had been through, and was now looking at opportunities to integrate operations.
“Now that we’re up and running, and running reliably, we’re actively looking at integration opportunities between Lima and Toledo and ways to capture additional margin,” Chiasson told an earnings call, referring to Cenovus’s Lima, Ohio, refinery.
Cenovus shares were last up 2.2 per cent on the Toronto Stock Exchange at $26.92.
The company said its quarterly upstream production climbed to 797,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) from 777,900 boepd a year earlier, as it restarted production that had been offline due to Alberta wildfires and planned maintenance activity.
Cenovus reported net income of $1.86-billion, or 97 cents per share, for the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with $1.61-billion, or 81 cents per share, a year earlier.
But its earnings missed analysts’ expectations of $1.01 per share, according to LSEG data.
Cenovus said its results were partially offset by higher cash taxes and royalties and oil sands segment sales lagging production by about 6,000 boepd during the quarter.
It also said planned maintenance activities in its U.S. operations in the current quarter would impact production in the range of 55,000 bpd to 65,000 bpd.