Chevron has reported a decline in first-quarter profit as crude prices dropped and bad weather disrupted some oil and natural gas production.

First-quarter net income was $4.51 billion, or $2.36 a share, compared with $6.18 billion, or $3.18, a year earlier, San Ramon, California-based Chevron said in a statement yesterday. Chevron, the world’s third-largest oil producer by market value, is among international energy explorers caught in the middle of an intensifying row between the US and its European allies on one side, and Russian president Vladimir Putin on the other.

Mr Putin put foreign oil companies on the spot on April 29th when he said they may be shut out of his country if their governments continued to ratchet up sanctions against Russian nationals and institutions. Chevron and its partners are in the midst of a $5.4 billion expansion of a pipeline that carries oil across Russia’s Caucasus region from fields in neighbouring Kazakhstan that account for 12 per cent of the company’s global supplies.

Chevron warned investors last month that weather conditions had curtailed oil and gas production in key regions, including Central Asia and North America. The company also cited negative impacts in the quarter from currency fluctuations and falling values for some assets. – (Bloomberg)