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Bloomberg
Chevron Corp’s future growth prospects may be dimming after the oil explorer pumped more crude than it discovered or bought last year, eroding its portfolio of untapped fields.
New finds, acquisitions and expansions of existing oil and natural gas holdings were equivalent to just 44% of the company’s 2019 production, according to a regulatory filing.
That was Chevron’s poorest performance in that important metric since 2010. The measure, known as the reserves-replacement ratio, is key for investors because it helps them gauge whether an oil driller is doing enough to sustain future production that underpins everything from dividends to acquisitions.
For Chevron, whose stock outperformed all other supermajor oil producers last year, the reserves data signals the company may be struggling to locate untouched caches
of oil and gas as investors turn skeptical of the industry’s sustainability.
Chevron also wrote down the value of US gas assets last year.
Royal Dutch Shell said last month that it replaced just 65% of its 2019 output with new discoveries and purchases. And some analysts expect Exxon Mobil to take a writedown on some fields when it discloses reserves data in coming weeks.