BP Oil Production Drops For 6th Straight Quarter - Off 5% In Q4 2006 - AFP

LONDON (AFP) - BP, the world's second largest oil company, has said that its energy production dropped by five percent in the final three months of 2006, the sixth quarterly drop in a row. In a trading update on Tuesday, BP said it pumped 3.82 million barrels of oil and gas per day in the fourth quarter compared with 4.02 million barrels during the same period a year earlier owing to supply disruptions in Alaska, a cut in output by OPEC oil-producing cartel and weak demand for gas.

Analysts had expected fourth-quarter output in the region of 4.0 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (mboed). BP's share price slumped about 2.0 percent in response to the data. Excluding volumes from its Russian joint-venture TNK-BP, the group's production was around 2.89 mboed per day in the fourth quarter.

BP said it was hit in the final three months of 2006 "by weather related delays to Alaskan loadings, unusually low seasonal gas demand, OPEC quota restrictions, and reduced entitlements under production sharing contracts". By contrast, output was supported by a resumption in production after the summer maintenance season, mainly in the North Sea and Alaska, and new projects in Azerbaijan and North Africa.

During the third quarter, BP had been forced to partially shut Alaska's Prudhoe Bay -- the largest oil field in the United States -- owing to severe pipeline corrosion. This resulted in delays to BP's fourth-quarter output.

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