Canadian oil producer Imperial Oil IMO-T posted a fall in first-quarter profit on Friday, hurt by lower refinery throughput.
The company’s operations were temporarily disrupted by an outage on the TC Energy , which significantly impacted output.
At Syncrude, Imperial faced further setbacks due to an unplanned outage, and the complex, non-linear relationship between Syncrude and Suncor’s Base upgrading operations added another layer of operational uncertainty.
Imperial Oil’s total throughput volumes, or the amount of crude processed, fell to 384,000 barrels per day during the first quarter, from 397,000 bpd a year ago.
Refinery utilization stood at 88 per cent, down from 91 per cent in the same quarter last year.
The Calgary-based company said its net income fell to $940-million, or $1.94 per share, in the quarter ended March 31, from $1.29-billion, or $2.52 per share, a year earlier.