Exxon Mobil's Q3 earnings up 41%

U.S. oil and gas giant Exxon Mobil said Thursday that its third quarter earnings surged by 41 percent on higher oil and gas prices despite a drop in production. Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil, the world's biggest publicly traded oil company, reported that its revenues in the third quarter stood at 125.3 billion U.S. dollars, marking a 31.5-percent increase from a year ago. During the three months, the company's net income reached 10.3 billion U.S. dollars, up from 7.4 billion dollars in the same period of 2010, the company said. Exxon Mobil said that with oil and gas prices increasing in the third quarter, the company sold oil domestically for an average of 95.58 dollars a barrel, up 35.2 percent from a year ago, and charged 107.32 dollars a barrel in the international market, up 45.4 percent from last year. Increased prices for oil and natural gas helped the company's domestic earnings increase 18.5 percent to 1.2 billion dollars and its international revenues jump 163 percent to 7.2 billion dollars. However, its profit was hurt by a production decline. Oil equivalent production fell 4 percent to 4.282 million barrels per day due to field declines, divestments and OPEC quotas. Exxon Mobil's 41-percent increase of the third quarter profit was the second largest among the world's leading oil companies that have reported third quarter results, only following Shell, which reported a 100-percent profit growth in the third quarter to 7 billion dollars.