By Arunima Kumar
(Reuters) -U.S. oil and gas producers on Wednesday posted quarterly profits that beat Wall Street estimates as energy prices recovered from pandemic lows to touch multi-year highs, prompting some to return the gains to investors as dividends.
U.S. natural gas prices have surged more than 60% in the third quarter, while U.S. crude has climbed about 73% since the start of the year.
Pioneer Natural Resources, Marathon Oil and Apache parent APA Corp all posted third-quarter profit that beat estimates, while Continental Resources Inc’s adjusted profit was in line with consensus, according to Refinitiv IBES data.
Yet, in a marked departure from previous booms in oil prices, producers have held back from raising spending to boost production and instead are returning cash to shareholders in the form of buybacks and dividends.
Continental on Wednesday increased its quarterly dividend by 5 cents to 20 cents per share, while Pioneer Natural Resources Co’s raised its quarterly cash dividend by more than 10% to 62 cents per share and declared a quarterly variable dividend of $3.02 per share.
APA Corp also raised its dividend for the second time this year, while Marathon Oil increased its quarterly base dividend for the third consecutive quarter to $0.06 per share.
Continental, which raised its capital expenditure by $100 million to $200 million, also said it would buy Pioneer’s Delaware basin assets in an all-cash deal valued at $3.25 billion.
(Reporting by Arunima Kumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)
