Oil Price Surge Helps Oxy’s Profit Jump 74%

Occidental Petroleum Corp., reaping the benefits of high oil prices, said Monday that its fourth-quarter profit soared 74% from a year earlier on a 31% jump in sales.

The Westwood-based energy and chemicals company said a 3.5% boost in its oil and natural-gas production, to the equivalent of an average of 566,000 barrels of oil a day, also contributed to the gains.

Occidental’s net income climbed to $665 million, or $1.64 a share, from $382 million, or 97 cents a share, a year earlier. Sales rose to $3.08 billion from $2.35 billion.

Occidental also continues negotiating its return to Libya, which is preparing to reopen its vast oil properties to U.S. operators, executives said.

“We believe we’ll be back in Libya in 2005,” Ray Irani, Occidental’s chairman and chief executive, told analysts in a conference call.

He declined to provide a more specific timetable, but said “our top negotiating team is currently in Libya and having further discussions this week.”

The last U.S. oil companies in Libya were ordered out by the African nation in 1986 as the United States imposed sanctions against Libyan leader Col. Moammar Kadafi.

Relations between the two countries have warmed over the last year, prompting Kadafi’s government to invite Occidental and other U.S. companies to return.

For all of 2004, Occidental’s profit soared 63% to $2.49 billion, or $6.21 a share, from $1.53 billion, or $3.93 a share, in 2003. Its annual sales rose 24% to $11.4 billion from $9.2 billion.

Shares of Occidental rose 17 cents to $57.80 on the New York Stock Exchange.