With a 3 percent increase in oil production in 2017, Oklahoma City’s Chesapeake Energy reported its total net income for the year was $953 million. Before taxes and interest were deducted, the firm’s 2017 earnings totaled $2.376 billion.
The net income for the year translated into $0.90 per diluted share.
Fourth quarter net income was $334 million or 33 cents a diluted share. Chesapeake indicated its average 2017 production was 547,800 barrels of oil equivalent a day, a 3 percent increased compared to 2016 levels. Oil production was up 11 percent in the 2017 fourth quarter compared to the previous year.
“We made significant progress toward our goals of reducing our debt, increasing cash flow generation and margin enhancement,” said Doug Lawler, Chesapeake’s Chief Executive Officer. “We further demonstrated the depth of our portfolio by closing on approximately $1.3 billion in asset and property sales and signed additional asset sales for approximately $575 million that we expect to close by the end of the 2018 second quarter.”
The company’s principal debt balance at the end of 2017 was $9.981 billion, down slightly from the $9.989 billion reported at the end of 2016. Chesapeake’s liquidity at the end of 2017 totaled $2.893 billion.
As for its drilling and exploration plans, Chesapeake anticipates adding a fourth rig in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and southern Montana. Chesapeake has most of its rigs, five of them, in the Eagle Ford Shale in south Texas. One drilling rig is active in the Marcellus Shale in northeast Pennsylvania.
Chesapeake reported three rigs are drilling in the Haynesville Shale in Louisiana. The company has only one rig operating in Oklahoma but expects to place on production up to 40 wells in 2018 compared to the 71 wells it put into production last year.