Imperial Oil reports significant loss in amid Covid-19 crisis

Canadian firm Imperial Oil has reported a loss of C$188m ($133.24m) or $0.25 per share in the first quarter of this year, compared with the net income of C$293m ($208m) or $0.38 a share in the corresponding 2019 period (Q1 2019).

Imperial Oil also recorded a C$301m ($213.5m) non-cash charge as crude prices collapsed because of excess supply and a fall in fuel demand due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The company maintains a cash balance of C$1.4bn ($990m) and continued to pay a dividend of $0.22 a share.

Imperial Oil chairman, president and CEO Brad Corson said: “Imperial is taking the necessary steps to help ensure the health and safety of employees and the ongoing integrity of our operations during these quickly-evolving and difficult times.

“Imperial is well-positioned to weather the current business environment, and emerge stronger when conditions improve, drawing on the resilience of our integrated business, our high-quality asset portfolio, our strong financial position, and our unwavering focus on long-term value.

“Kearl achieved an impressive average production of 248,000 barrels per day in March. This demonstrates the positive production and reliability improvements brought by the supplemental crushers now in operation at the site.”

In September last year, Imperial Oil signed an agreement with the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) to develop its in-house machine learning capabilities for applied artificial intelligence (AI) projects.

In the month of March of the same year, Imperial Oil announced that it will delay its C$2.6bn ($1.94bn) Aspen in situ oil sands project in Alberta, Canada, by at least a year due to prevailing market conditions.

In June 2015, Imperial Oil started production at its Kearl oil sands expansion project in Alberta, Canada.